Heini Halberstam (11 September 1926
[ oreen Halberstam, wife/ref> – 25 January 2014) was a Czech-born British mathematician, working in the field of ]analytic number theory
In mathematics, analytic number theory is a branch of number theory that uses methods from mathematical analysis to solve problems about the integers. It is often said to have begun with Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet's 1837 introduction of Diric ...
. He is remembered in part for the Elliott–Halberstam conjecture
In number theory, the Elliott–Halberstam conjecture is a conjecture about the distribution of prime numbers in arithmetic progressions. It has many applications in sieve theory. It is named for Peter D. T. A. Elliott and Heini Halberstam, who st ...
from 1968.
Life and career
Halberstam was born in Most
Most or Möst or ''variation'', may refer to:
Places
* Most, Kardzhali Province, a village in Bulgaria
* Most (city), a city in the Czech Republic
** Most District, a district surrounding the city
** Most Basin, a lowland named after the city
** A ...
, Czechoslovakia
, rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי,
, common_name = Czechoslovakia
, life_span = 1918–19391945–1992
, p1 = Austria-Hungary
, image_p1 ...
and died in Champaign, Illinois, US. His father died when he was very young. After Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
's annexation of the Sudetenland
The Sudetenland ( , ; Czech and sk, Sudety) is the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the ...
, he and his mother moved to Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
. At the age of twelve, as the Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
occupation progressed, he was one of the 669 children saved by Sir Nicholas Winton, who organized the Kindertransport
The ''Kindertransport'' (German for "children's transport") was an organised rescue effort of children (but not their parents) from Nazi-controlled territory that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World ...
, a train that allowed those children to leave Nazi-occupied territory. He was sent to England, where he lived during World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
He obtained his PhD in 1952, from University College, London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
, under supervision of Theodor Estermann
Theodor Estermann (5 February 1902 – 29 November 1991) was a German-born American mathematician, working in the field of analytic number theory. The Estermann measure, a measure of the central symmetry of a convex set in the Euclidean plan ...
. From 1962 until 1964, Halberstam was Erasmus Smith's Professor of Mathematics at Trinity College Dublin; From 1964 until 1980, Halberstam was a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Nottingham
The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...
. In 1980, he took up a position at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...
(UIUC) and became an Emeritus Professor at UIUC in 1996. In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...
.
He is known also for books, ''Sequences
In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is called t ...
'' with Klaus Roth
Klaus Friedrich Roth (29 October 1925 – 10 November 2015) was a German-born British mathematician who won the Fields Medal for proving Roth's theorem on the Diophantine approximation of algebraic numbers. He was also a winner of the De M ...
on additive number theory
Additive number theory is the subfield of number theory concerning the study of subsets of integers and their behavior under addition. More abstractly, the field of additive number theory includes the study of abelian groups and commutative semigr ...
, and with H. E. Richert on sieve theory
Sieve theory is a set of general techniques in number theory, designed to count, or more realistically to estimate the size of, sifted sets of integers. The prototypical example of a sifted set is the set of prime numbers up to some prescribed lim ...
.[
]
References
1926 births
2014 deaths
20th-century English mathematicians
21st-century English mathematicians
Czech Jews
Number theorists
Academics of the University of Nottingham
Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
Kindertransport refugees
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty
Alumni of University College London
Donegall Lecturers of Mathematics at Trinity College Dublin
People from Most (city)
University of Illinois faculty
English emigrants to the United States
Czechoslovak emigrants to England
{{UK-mathematician-stub