John Michael Horvath (born János Horváth; 30 July 1924 in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

– 12 March 2015) was a Hungarian-American mathematician noted for his contributions to

analysis 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 (3 ...

especially 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, norm, topology, etc.) and the linear functions defined o ...

and distribution theory.Horvath János
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 24 March 2015

Education and career

Horvath received his doctorate in 1947 from the

University of Budapest A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

as a student of

Lipót Fejér Lipót Fejér (or Leopold Fejér, ; 9 February 1880 – 15 October 1959) was a Hungarian mathematician of Jewish heritage. Fejér was born Leopold Weisz, and changed to the Hungarian name Fejér around 1900. Biography Fejér studied mathematic ...

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 ...

. Four other talented mathematicians also graduated in the class of 1947: János Aczél,

Ákos Császár Ákos Császár ( hu, Császár Ákos, ) (26 February 1924, Budapest – 14 December 2017, Budapest) was a Hungarian mathematician, specializing in general topology and real analysis. He discovered the Császár polyhedron, a nonconvex polyhedr ...

László Fuchs László Fuchs (born June 24, 1924) is a Hungarian-born American mathematician, the Evelyn and John G. Phillips Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Mathematics at Tulane University.

and István Gál. Together with Horvath, they were referred to as the Big Five. After obtaining his doctorate, he went to the

French National Centre for Scientific Research The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,63 ...

(CNRS) to do research, then to the University of Los Andes in Bogota, and finally, from 1957 to 1994 he taught in the United States at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

and was then awarded the title of Professor Emeritus.John Horvath: obituary
University of Maryland: Department of Mathematics

MathSciNet MathSciNet is a searchable online bibliographic database created by the American Mathematical Society in 1996. It contains all of the contents of the journal ''Mathematical Reviews'' (MR) since 1940 along with an extensive author database, links ...

called his book ''Topological Vector Spaces and Distributions'', "The most readable introduction to the theory of vector spaces available in English and possibly any other language."
Topological Vector Spaces and Distributions
' By: John Horvath, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1966, His work on analytic continuations and a general definition of the

Convolution In mathematics (in particular, functional analysis), convolution is a mathematical operation on two functions ( and ) that produces a third function (f*g) that expresses how the shape of one is modified by the other. The term ''convolution'' ...

of distributions was essential to

Laurent Schwartz Laurent-Moïse Schwartz (; 5 March 1915 – 4 July 2002) was a French mathematician. He pioneered the theory of distributions, which gives a well-defined meaning to objects such as the Dirac delta function. He was awarded the Fields Medal in ...

who went on to develop a full

theory of distributions A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be ...

in the late 1940s.On some contributions of John Horvath to the theory of distributions

Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications The ''Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications'' is an academic journal in mathematics, specializing in mathematical analysis and related topics in applied mathematics. It was founded in 1960, as part of a series of new journals on areas o ...

Vol 297, Issue 2, 15 September 2004, Pages 353-383 In 2006 he edited and wrote one of the chapters for ''A Panorama of Hungarian Mathematics in the Twentieth Century''. He was a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Works

* (2005)
A Panorama of Hungarian Mathematics in the Twentieth Century
' Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. * (1966)

' Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Horvath, John 1924 births 2015 deaths 20th-century Hungarian mathematicians Mathematical analysts Budapest University alumni Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences University System of Maryland faculty University of Los Andes (Colombia) alumni Expatriate academics in the United States Hungarian expatriates in the United States