Karl Menger (January 13, 1902 – October 5, 1985) was an Austrian-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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
, the son of the economist
Carl Menger
Carl Menger von Wolfensgrün (; ; 28 February 1840 – 26 February 1921) was an Austrian economist and the founder of the Austrian School of economics. Menger contributed to the development of the theories of marginalism and marginal utility, ...
. In mathematics, Menger studied the theory of
algebras
In mathematics, an algebra over a field (often simply called an algebra) is a vector space equipped with a bilinear product. Thus, an algebra is an algebraic structure consisting of a set together with operations of multiplication and additio ...
and the
dimension theory
In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. Thus, a line has a dimension of one (1D) because only one coordi ...
of low-
regularity ("rough") curves and regions; in
graph theory
In mathematics, graph theory is the study of '' graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conn ...
, he is credited with
Menger's theorem. Outside of mathematics, Menger has substantial contributions to
game theory and social sciences.
Biography
Karl Menger was a student of
Hans Hahn and received his PhD from the
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich h ...
in 1924.
L. E. J. Brouwer invited Menger in 1925 to teach at the
University of Amsterdam
The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other bein ...
. In 1927, he returned to Vienna to accept a professorship there. In 1930 and 1931 he was visiting lecturer 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 high ...
and the
Rice Institute
The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is an international agricultural research and training organization with its headquarters in Los Baños, Laguna, in the Philippines, and offices in seventeen countries. IRRI is known for its wo ...
. From 1937 to 1946 he was a professor at the
University of Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic university, Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend, Indiana, South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin fo ...
. From 1946 to 1971, he was a professor at
Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has pro ...
(IIT) in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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. In 1983, IIT awarded Menger a Doctor of Humane Letters and Sciences degree.
Contributions to mathematics
His most famous popular contribution was the
Menger sponge (mistakenly known as
Sierpinski's sponge), a three-dimensional version of the
Sierpiński carpet. It is also related to the
Cantor set
In mathematics, the Cantor set is a set of points lying on a single line segment that has a number of unintuitive properties. It was discovered in 1874 by Henry John Stephen Smith and introduced by German mathematician Georg Cantor in 1883.
T ...
.
With
Arthur Cayley, Menger is considered one of the founders of
distance geometry; especially by having formalized definitions of the notions of ''angle'' and of ''curvature'' in terms of directly measurable
physical quantities
A physical quantity is a physical property of a material or system that can be quantified by measurement. A physical quantity can be expressed as a ''value'', which is the algebraic multiplication of a ' Numerical value ' and a ' Unit '. For examp ...
, namely ratios of ''distance'' values. The characteristic mathematical expressions appearing in those definitions are
Cayley–Menger determinants.
He was an active participant of the
Vienna Circle, which had discussions in the 1920s on social science and philosophy. During that time, he published an influential result on the
St. Petersburg paradox with applications to the
utility theory in
economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analy ...
; this result has since been criticised as fundamentally misleading. Later he contributed to the development of
game theory with
Oskar Morgenstern
Oskar Morgenstern (January 24, 1902 – July 26, 1977) was an Austrian-American economist. In collaboration with mathematician John von Neumann, he founded the mathematical field of game theory as applied to the social sciences and strategic decis ...
.
Legacy
Menger's longest and last academic post was at the Illinois Institute of Technology, which hosts an annual IIT Karl Menger Lecture and offers the IIT Karl Menger Student Award to an exceptional student for scholarship each year.
See also
*
Distance geometry
*
Kuratowski's theorem
*
Selection principle
In mathematics, a selection principle is a rule asserting
the possibility of obtaining mathematically significant objects by
selecting elements from given sequences of sets. The theory of selection principles
studies these principles and their r ...
*
Travelling salesman problem
The travelling salesman problem (also called the travelling salesperson problem or TSP) asks the following question: "Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route that visits each cit ...
Notes
Further reading
*Crilly, Tony, 2005, "Paul Urysohn and Karl Menger: papers on dimension theory" in Grattan-Guinness, I., ed., ''Landmark Writings in Western Mathematics''. Elsevier: 844–55.
* Golland, Louise and Sigmund, Karl "Exact Thought in a Demented Time: Karl Menger and his Viennese Mathematical Colloquium" ''The Mathematical Intelligencer
''The Mathematical Intelligencer'' is a mathematical journal published by Springer Verlag that aims at a conversational and scholarly tone, rather than the technical and specialist tone more common among academic journals. Volumes are released qua ...
2000'', Vol 22,1, 34-45
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Menger, Karl
1902 births
1985 deaths
20th-century American mathematicians
Austrian mathematicians
Vienna Circle
Harvard University staff
Rice University staff
Duke University faculty
University of Notre Dame faculty
Illinois Institute of Technology faculty
Austrian emigrants to the United States
University of Vienna alumni
Scientists from Vienna