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Herbert Federer
Herbert Federer (July 23, 1920 – April 21, 2010) was an American mathematician. He is one of the creators of geometric measure theory, at the meeting point of differential geometry and mathematical analysis.Parks, H. (2012''Remembering Herbert Federer (1920–2010)'' NAMS 59(5), 622-631. Career Federer was born July 23, 1920, in Vienna, Austria. After emigrating to the US in 1938, he studied mathematics and physics at the University of California, Berkeley, earning the Ph.D. as a student of Anthony Morse in 1944. He then spent virtually his entire career as a member of the Brown University Mathematics Department, where he eventually retired with the title of Professor Emeritus. Federer wrote more than thirty research papers in addition to his book ''Geometric measure theory''. The Mathematics Genealogy Project assigns him nine Ph.D. students and well over a hundred subsequent descendants. His most productive students include the late Frederick J. Almgren, Jr. (1933–1997), a p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History One of the earliest known mathematicians were Thales of Miletus (c. 624–c.546 BC); he has been hailed as the first true mathematician and the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed. He is credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales' Theorem. The number of known mathematicians grew when Pythagoras of Samos (c. 582–c. 507 BC) established the Pythagorean School, whose doctrine it was that mathematics ruled the universe and whose motto was "All is number". It was the Pythagoreans who coined the term "mathematics", and with whom the study of mathematics for its own sake begins. The first woman mathematician recorded by history was Hypati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Green's Theorem
In vector calculus, Green's theorem relates a line integral around a simple closed curve to a double integral over the plane region bounded by . It is the two-dimensional special case of Stokes' theorem. Theorem Let be a positively oriented, piecewise smooth, simple closed curve in a plane, and let be the region bounded by . If and are functions of defined on an open region containing and have continuous partial derivatives there, then \oint_C (L\, dx + M\, dy) = \iint_ \left(\frac - \frac\right) dx\, dy where the path of integration along is anticlockwise. In physics, Green's theorem finds many applications. One is solving two-dimensional flow integrals, stating that the sum of fluid outflowing from a volume is equal to the total outflow summed about an enclosing area. In plane geometry, and in particular, area surveying, Green's theorem can be used to determine the area and centroid of plane figures solely by integrating over the perimeter. Proof when ''D'' is a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minimal Surface
In mathematics, a minimal surface is a surface that locally minimizes its area. This is equivalent to having zero mean curvature (see definitions below). The term "minimal surface" is used because these surfaces originally arose as surfaces that minimized total surface area subject to some constraint. Physical models of area-minimizing minimal surfaces can be made by dipping a wire frame into a soap solution, forming a soap film, which is a minimal surface whose boundary is the wire frame. However, the term is used for more general surfaces that may self-intersect or do not have constraints. For a given constraint there may also exist several minimal surfaces with different areas (for example, see minimal surface of revolution): the standard definitions only relate to a local optimum, not a global optimum. Definitions Minimal surfaces can be defined in several equivalent ways in R3. The fact that they are equivalent serves to demonstrate how minimal surface theory lies at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plateau's Problem
In mathematics, Plateau's problem is to show the existence of a minimal surface with a given boundary, a problem raised by Joseph-Louis Lagrange in 1760. However, it is named after Joseph Plateau who experimented with soap films. The problem is considered part of the calculus of variations. The existence and regularity problems are part of geometric measure theory. History Various specialized forms of the problem were solved, but it was only in 1930 that general solutions were found in the context of mappings (immersions) independently by Jesse Douglas and Tibor Radó. Their methods were quite different; Radó's work built on the previous work of René Garnier and held only for rectifiable simple closed curves, whereas Douglas used completely new ideas with his result holding for an arbitrary simple closed curve. Both relied on setting up minimization problems; Douglas minimized the now-named Douglas integral while Radó minimized the "energy". Douglas went on to be awarded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Measure Theory
In mathematics, the concept of a measure is a generalization and formalization of geometrical measures ( length, area, volume) and other common notions, such as mass and probability of events. These seemingly distinct concepts have many similarities and can often be treated together in a single mathematical context. Measures are foundational in probability theory, integration theory, and can be generalized to assume negative values, as with electrical charge. Far-reaching generalizations (such as spectral measures and projection-valued measures) of measure are widely used in quantum physics and physics in general. The intuition behind this concept dates back to ancient Greece, when Archimedes tried to calculate the area of a circle. But it was not until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that measure theory became a branch of mathematics. The foundations of modern measure theory were laid in the works of Émile Borel, Henri Lebesgue, Nikolai Luzin, Johann Radon, Const ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quermassintegral
In mathematics, more specifically, in convex geometry, the mixed volume is a way to associate a non-negative number to an of convex bodies in space. This number depends on the size and shape of the bodies and on their relative orientation to each other. Definition Let K_1, K_2, \dots, K_r be convex bodies in \mathbb^n and consider the function : f(\lambda_1, \ldots, \lambda_r) = \mathrm_n (\lambda_1 K_1 + \cdots + \lambda_r K_r), \qquad \lambda_i \geq 0, where \text_n stands for the n-dimensional volume and its argument is the Minkowski sum of the scaled convex bodies K_i. One can show that f is a homogeneous polynomial of degree n, therefore it can be written as : f(\lambda_1, \ldots, \lambda_r) = \sum_^r V(K_, \ldots, K_) \lambda_ \cdots \lambda_, where the functions V are symmetric. For a particular index function j \in \^n , the coefficient V(K_, \dots, K_) is called the mixed volume of K_, \dots, K_. Properties * The mixed volume is uniquely determined by the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Euclidean Space
Euclidean space is the fundamental space of geometry, intended to represent physical space. Originally, that is, in Euclid's Elements, Euclid's ''Elements'', it was the three-dimensional space of Euclidean geometry, but in modern mathematics there are Euclidean spaces of any positive integer dimension (mathematics), dimension, including the three-dimensional space and the ''Euclidean plane'' (dimension two). The qualifier "Euclidean" is used to distinguish Euclidean spaces from other spaces that were later considered in physics and modern mathematics. Ancient History of geometry#Greek geometry, Greek geometers introduced Euclidean space for modeling the physical space. Their work was collected by the Greek mathematics, ancient Greek mathematician Euclid in his ''Elements'', with the great innovation of ''mathematical proof, proving'' all properties of the space as theorems, by starting from a few fundamental properties, called ''postulates'', which either were considered as eviden ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Convex Set
In geometry, a subset of a Euclidean space, or more generally an affine space over the reals, is convex if, given any two points in the subset, the subset contains the whole line segment that joins them. Equivalently, a convex set or a convex region is a subset that intersects every line into a single line segment (possibly empty). For example, a solid cube is a convex set, but anything that is hollow or has an indent, for example, a crescent shape, is not convex. The boundary of a convex set is always a convex curve. The intersection of all the convex sets that contain a given subset of Euclidean space is called the convex hull of . It is the smallest convex set containing . A convex function is a real-valued function defined on an interval with the property that its epigraph (the set of points on or above the graph of the function) is a convex set. Convex minimization is a subfield of optimization that studies the problem of minimizing convex functions over convex se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steiner Formula
In mathematics, more specifically, in convex geometry, the mixed volume is a way to associate a non-negative number to an of convex bodies in space. This number depends on the size and shape of the bodies and on their relative orientation to each other. Definition Let K_1, K_2, \dots, K_r be convex bodies in \mathbb^n and consider the function : f(\lambda_1, \ldots, \lambda_r) = \mathrm_n (\lambda_1 K_1 + \cdots + \lambda_r K_r), \qquad \lambda_i \geq 0, where \text_n stands for the n-dimensional volume and its argument is the Minkowski sum of the scaled convex bodies K_i. One can show that f is a homogeneous polynomial of degree n, therefore it can be written as : f(\lambda_1, \ldots, \lambda_r) = \sum_^r V(K_, \ldots, K_) \lambda_ \cdots \lambda_, where the functions V are symmetric. For a particular index function j \in \^n , the coefficient V(K_, \dots, K_) is called the mixed volume of K_, \dots, K_. Properties * The mixed volume is uniquely determined by the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curvature
In mathematics, curvature is any of several strongly related concepts in geometry. Intuitively, the curvature is the amount by which a curve deviates from being a straight line, or a surface deviates from being a plane. For curves, the canonical example is that of a circle, which has a curvature equal to the reciprocal of its radius. Smaller circles bend more sharply, and hence have higher curvature. The curvature ''at a point'' of a differentiable curve is the curvature of its osculating circle, that is the circle that best approximates the curve near this point. The curvature of a straight line is zero. In contrast to the tangent, which is a vector quantity, the curvature at a point is typically a scalar quantity, that is, it is expressed by a single real number. For surfaces (and, more generally for higher-dimensional manifolds), that are embedded in a Euclidean space, the concept of curvature is more complex, as it depends on the choice of a direction on the surface or man ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Borel Subset
In mathematics, a Borel set is any set in a topological space that can be formed from open sets (or, equivalently, from closed sets) through the operations of countable union, countable intersection, and relative complement. Borel sets are named after Émile Borel. For a topological space ''X'', the collection of all Borel sets on ''X'' forms a σ-algebra, known as the Borel algebra or Borel σ-algebra. The Borel algebra on ''X'' is the smallest σ-algebra containing all open sets (or, equivalently, all closed sets). Borel sets are important in measure theory, since any measure defined on the open sets of a space, or on the closed sets of a space, must also be defined on all Borel sets of that space. Any measure defined on the Borel sets is called a Borel measure. Borel sets and the associated Borel hierarchy also play a fundamental role in descriptive set theory. In some contexts, Borel sets are defined to be generated by the compact sets of the topological space, r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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