Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy (29 July 1913,
Kolozsvár
Cluj-Napoca ( ; ), or simply Cluj ( , ), is a city in northwestern Romania. It is the second-most populous city in the country and the seat of Cluj County. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest (), Budapest () and Belgrade ( ...
– 21 December 1998,
Szeged
Szeged ( , ; see also #Etymology, other alternative names) is List of cities and towns of Hungary#Largest cities in Hungary, the third largest city of Hungary, the largest city and regional centre of the Southern Great Plain and the county seat ...
) was a
Hungarian 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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
. His father,
Gyula Szőkefalvi-Nagy was also a famed mathematician. Szőkefalvi-Nagy collaborated with
Alfréd Haar
Alfréd Haar (; 11 October 1885, Budapest – 16 March 1933, Szeged) was a Kingdom of Hungary, Hungarian mathematician. In 1904 he began to study at the University of Göttingen. His doctorate was supervised by David Hilbert. The Haar me ...
and
Frigyes Riesz
Frigyes Riesz (, , sometimes known in English and French as Frederic Riesz; 22 January 1880 – 28 February 1956) was a HungarianEberhard Zeidler: Nonlinear Functional Analysis and Its Applications: Linear monotone operators. Springer, 199/ref> ...
, founders of the Szegedian school of mathematics. He contributed to the theory of
Fourier series
A Fourier series () is an Series expansion, expansion of a periodic function into a sum of trigonometric functions. The Fourier series is an example of a trigonometric series. By expressing a function as a sum of sines and cosines, many problems ...
and
approximation theory
In mathematics, approximation theory is concerned with how function (mathematics), functions can best be approximation, approximated with simpler functions, and with quantitative property, quantitatively characterization (mathematics), characteri ...
. His most important achievements were made in
functional analysis
Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of vector spaces endowed with some kind of limit-related structure (for example, Inner product space#Definition, inner product, Norm (mathematics ...
, especially, in the theory of
Hilbert space operators. He was editor-in-chief of the ''
Zentralblatt für Mathematik'', the ''
Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum
''Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum'' is a Hungarian mathematical journal published by the János Bolyai Mathematical Institute (University of Szeged). It was established by Alfréd Haar and Frigyes Riesz in 1922. The current editor-in-chief is Lajo ...
'', and the ''
Analysis Mathematica''. He was awarded the
Kossuth Prize
The Kossuth Prize (, ) is a state-sponsored award in Hungary, named after the Hungarian politician and revolutionist Lajos Kossuth. The Prize was established in 1936, by the Hungarian National Assembly, to acknowledge outstanding personal and grou ...
in 1953, along with his co-author F. Riesz, for his book ''Leçons d'analyse fonctionnelle.'' He was awarded the
Lomonosov Medal
The Lomonosov Gold Medal ( ''Bol'shaya zolotaya medal' imeni M. V. Lomonosova''), named after Russian scientist and polymath Mikhail Lomonosov, is awarded each year since 1959 for outstanding achievements in the natural sciences and the humaniti ...
in 1979. The Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy Medal honoring his memory is awarded yearly by
Bolyai Institute.
His books
* Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy: ''Spektraldarstellung linearer Transformationen des Hilbertschen Raumes''.(German) Berlin, 1942. 80 p.; 1967. 82 p.
* Frederic Riesz, Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy: ''Leçons d'analyse fonctionnelle''. (French) 2e éd. Akadémiai Kiado, Budapest, 1953, VIII+455 pp.
*
*
Ciprian Foiaş, Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy: ''Analyse harmonique des opérateurs de l'espace de Hilbert''. (French) Masson et Cie, Paris;
Akadémiai Kiadó
Akadémiai Kiadó (, ) is the publishing house of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. It is one of Hungary's most important publishers of scientific books and journals. Its majority-owner is the Amsterdam-based publishing conglomerate Wolters Klu ...
, Budapest 1967 xi+373 pp.
* Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy, Frederic Riesz: ''Funkcionálanalízis''. Budapest, 1988. 534 p. (English: ''Functional Analysis'' (1990). Dover. )
His articles
* ''Diagonalization of matrices over H
∞''. Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum. Szeged, 1976
* ''On contractions similar to isometries and Toeplitz operators'', with Ciprian Foiaş. Ann. Acad. Scient. Fennicae, 1976.
* ''The function model of a contraction and the space L’/H’'', with Ciprian Foiaş. Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum. Szeged, 1979, 1980.
* ''Toeplitz type operators and hyponormality'', with Ciprian Foiaş. Operator theory. Advances and appl., 1983.
* ''Factoring compact operator-valued functions'', with authors. Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum. Szeged, 1985.
Sz.-Nagy, Béla (1954), "Ein Satz über Parallelverschiebungen konvexer Körper", Acta Universitatis Szegediensis, 15: 169–177, MR 0065942, archived from the original on 2016-03-04, retrieved 2013-05-19.
Award in his honour
In 1999, Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy's daughter Erzsébet, established the Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy Medal to remember her father. This medal is meant to recognize distinguished mathematicians who have published significant work in ''Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum''. The following mathematicians have been awarded the medal:
*
C. Foiaş (2000)
*K. Tandori (2001)
*L. Leindler (2002)
*
G. Grätzer (2003)
*F. Móricz (2004)
*T. Ando (2005)
*B. Csákány (2006)
*H. Bercovici (2007)
*E.T. Schmidt (2008)
*H. Langer (2009)
*P.A. Grillet (2010)
*L. Zsidó (2011)
*L. Kérchy (2012)
*V. Müller (2013)
*Z. Sebestyén (2014)
*Pei Yuan Wu (2015)
*G. Czédli (2016)
*
L. Lovász (2017)
*P. Šemrl (2018)
*L. Hatvani (2019)
*F. H. Szafraniec (2020)
*L. Stachó (2021)
*Zs. Páles (2022)
*A. Böttcher (2023)
*J. Mashreghi (2024)
See also
*
Sz.-Nagy's dilation theorem
*
Erdős-Nagy theorem
To the memory of Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy
* Operator theory: advances and applications. Recent advances in operator theory and related topics : the Béla Szökefalvi-Nagy memorial volume :
emorial conference held August 2–6, 1999 in Szeged/ eds. László Kérchy et al.
Basel
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;
Boston
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;
Berlin
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:
Birkhäuser Verlag
Birkhäuser was a Switzerland, Swiss publisher founded in 1879 by Emil Birkhäuser. It was acquired by Springer Science+Business Media in 1985. Today it is an imprint (trade name), imprint used by two companies in unrelated fields:
* Springer co ...
, 2001. XLIX, 670 p. (Operator theory : advances and applications; 127.)
References
* D.P. Zhelobenko, Bela Szokefalvi-Nagy (obituary), ''Russian Mathematical Surveys'' 54 (1999), 819-822.
Szôkefalvi-Nagy Béla(in
Hungarian)
Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Mathematical analysts
20th-century Hungarian mathematicians
1913 births
1998 deaths
Academic staff of Franz Joseph University
Mathematicians from Austria-Hungary
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