David Vernon Widder (25 March 1898 – 8 July 1990) was an American
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 ...
. He earned his
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
in 1924 under
George Birkhoff and went on to join the faculty there.
He was a co-founder of the ''
Duke Mathematical Journal
''Duke Mathematical Journal'' is a peer-reviewed mathematics journal published by Duke University Press. It was established in 1935. The founding editors-in-chief were David Widder, Arthur Coble, and Joseph Miller Thomas
Joseph Miller Thomas (16 ...
'' and the author of the textbook ''Advanced Calculus''. He wrote also '' The Laplace transform'' (in which he gave a first solution to
Landau's problem on the Dirichlet eta function), ''An introduction to transform theory'', and '' The convolution transform'' (co-author with I. I. Hirschman).
References
*''A Century of Mathematics in America'' by Peter L. Duren and
Richard Askey
Richard Allen Askey (4 June 1933 – 9 October 2019) was an American mathematician, known for his expertise in the area of special functions. The Askey–Wilson polynomials (introduced by him in 1984 together with James A. Wilson) are on the t ...
, American Mathematical Society, 1988, .
*''A History of the Second Fifty Years, American Mathematical Society 1939-1988'' By Everett Pitcher, American Mathematical Society, 1988, .
External links
*
1898 births
1990 deaths
Harvard University alumni
Harvard University faculty
20th-century American mathematicians
People from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Mathematicians from Pennsylvania
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