Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy (1913-1998) Hungarian mathematician

Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy (29 July 1913,

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– 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, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

. His father, Gyula Szőkefalvi-Nagy was also a famed mathematician. Szőkefalvi-Nagy collaborated with

Alfréd Haar Alfréd Haar ( hu, Haar Alfréd; 11 October 1885, Budapest – 16 March 1933, Szeged) was a 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 ( hu, Riesz Frigyes, , sometimes spelled as Frederic; 22 January 1880 – 28 February 1956) was a HungarianEberhard Zeidler: Nonlinear Functional Analysis and Its Applications: Linear monotone operators. Springer, 199/ref> mathema ...

, founders of the Szegedian school of mathematics. He contributed to the theory of

Fourier series A Fourier series () is a summation of harmonically related sinusoidal functions, also known as components or harmonics. The result of the summation is a periodic function whose functional form is determined by the choices of cycle length (or ''p ...

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 (e.g. Inner product space#Definition, inner product, Norm (mathematics)#Defini ...

, especially, in the theory of Hilbert space operators. He was editor-in-chief of the ''

Zentralblatt für Mathematik zbMATH Open, formerly Zentralblatt MATH, is a major reviewing service providing reviews and abstracts for articles in pure and applied mathematics, produced by the Berlin office of FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructur ...

'', 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 Analysis ( : analyses) is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (384 ...

''. He was awarded the

Kossuth Prize The Kossuth Prize ( hu, Kossuth-díj) is a state-sponsored award in Hungary, named after the Hungarian politician and revolutionist Lajos Kossuth. The Prize was established in 1948 (on occasion of the centenary of the March 15th revolution, the ...

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 (russian: Большая золотая медаль имени М. В. Ломоносова ''Bol'shaya zolotaya medal' imeni M. V. Lomonosova''), named after Russian scientist and polymath Mikhail Lomonosov, is awarded ...

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 Kluwer ...

, 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)

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.

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;

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

;

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, 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 {{europe-mathematician-stub

His books

His articles

Award in his honour

See also

To the memory of Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy

References