Leon Lichtenstein (16 May 1878 – 21 August 1933) was a Polish-German
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 ...
, who made contributions to the areas of
differential equations
In mathematics, a differential equation is an equation that relates one or more unknown functions and their derivatives. In applications, the functions generally represent physical quantities, the derivatives represent their rates of change, a ...
,
conformal mapping
In mathematics, a conformal map is a function that locally preserves angles, but not necessarily lengths.
More formally, let U and V be open subsets of \mathbb^n. A function f:U\to V is called conformal (or angle-preserving) at a point u_0\i ...
, and
potential theory
In mathematics and mathematical physics, potential theory is the study of harmonic functions.
The term "potential theory" was coined in 19th-century physics when it was realized that two fundamental forces of nature known at the time, namely gra ...
. He was also interested in theoretical physics, publishing research in hydrodynamics and
astronomy
Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...
.
Life and work
Leon Lichtenstein was born on 16 May 1878 to an
Ashkenazi Jewish
Ashkenazi Jews ( ; he, יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, translit=Yehudei Ashkenaz, ; yi, אַשכּנזישע ייִדן, Ashkenazishe Yidn), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or ''Ashkenazim'',, Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: , singu ...
family in
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is official ...
, then part of the
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the List of Russian monarchs, Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended th ...
. His cousin, Leo Wiener, was the father of MIT mathematician
Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American mathematician and philosopher. He was a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher ...
. He studied in
Berlin
Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...
Technische Hochschule Berlin
The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It ...
differential equations
In mathematics, a differential equation is an equation that relates one or more unknown functions and their derivatives. In applications, the functions generally represent physical quantities, the derivatives represent their rates of change, a ...
written under the supervision of
Hermann Schwarz
Karl Hermann Amandus Schwarz (; 25 January 1843 – 30 November 1921) was a German mathematician, known for his work in complex analysis.
Life
Schwarz was born in Hermsdorf, Silesia (now Jerzmanowa, Poland). In 1868 he married Marie Kummer, ...
and
Friedrich Schottky
Friedrich Hermann Schottky (24 July 1851 – 12 August 1935) was a German mathematician who worked on elliptic, abelian, and theta functions and introduced Schottky groups and Schottky's theorem. He was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław ...
. From 1902 he worked as an electrical engineer for
Siemens & Halske
Siemens & Halske AG (or Siemens-Halske) was a German electrical engineering company that later became part of Siemens.
It was founded on 12 October 1847 as ''Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske'' by Werner von Siemens and Johann Geo ...
; then, from 1910, he turned to the academic world by becoming privatdozent at the Berlin Technische Hochschule. Lichtenstein was one of the founders, in 1918, and the first editor of the journal ''
Mathematische Zeitschrift
''Mathematische Zeitschrift'' ( German for ''Mathematical Journal'') is a mathematical journal for pure and applied mathematics published by Springer Verlag.
It was founded in 1918 and edited by Leon Lichtenstein together with Konrad Knopp, Erh ...
''. In 1920 he moved to a mathematics chair at the
University of Münster
The University of Münster (german: Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, WWU) is a public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany.
With more than 43,000 students and over 120 fields of stud ...
and in 1922 he joined the
University of Leipzig
Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...
where he would spend the rest of his career. At the University of Leipzig, he founded a mathematical school and his students, including
Ernst Hölder
Ernst Otto Hölder (2 April 1901, Leipzig – 30 June 1990, Mainz) was a German mathematician who made contributions to partial differential equations and continuum mechanics.
Education and career
Hölder was born in Leipzig and studied at th ...
Karl Maruhn Karl may refer to:
People
* Karl (given name), including a list of people and characters with the name
* Karl der Große, commonly known in English as Charlemagne
* Karl Marx, German philosopher and political writer
* Karl of Austria, last Austr ...
, continuing his research in mathematics and theoretical physics.
In 1933, as the
Nazi party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...
came to power in Germany, Lichtenstein abandoned his position at the university and left to
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is divided into Voivodeships of Poland, sixteen voivodeships and is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union (EU), with over 38 mill ...
, as he would have been dismissed anyway for being Jewish. Shortly after, on 21 August 1933, he died of heart and kidney problems in
Zakopane
Zakopane ( Podhale Goral: ''Zokopane'') is a town in the extreme south of Poland, in the southern part of the Podhale region at the foot of the Tatra Mountains. From 1975 to 1998, it was part of Nowy Sącz Voivodeship; since 1999, it has been p ...
, in Poland.
Bibliography
*''Beiträge zur Theorie der Kabel- Untersuchungen zu den Kapazitätsverhältnissen von verseilten und konzentrischen Mehrfachkabeln.'' Oldenbourg, München 1908.
*''Grundlagen der Hydromechanik.'' Springer, Berlin 1929. Reprint 1968.
*''Gleichgewichtsfiguren rotierender Flüssigkeiten.'' Springer, Berlin 1933.
*''Vorlesungen über einige Klassen nichtlinearer Integralgleichungen und Integro-Differentialgleichungen nebst Anwendungen.'' Springer, Berlin 1931.
*''Astronomie und Mathematik in ihrer Wechselwirkung. Mathematische Probleme in der Theorie der Figur der Himmelskörper.'' 1922, Reprint: VDM, Saarbrücken 2007.
Symmetrizable compact operator
In mathematics, a symmetrizable compact operator is a compact operator on a Hilbert space that can be composed with a positive operator with trivial kernel to produce a self-adjoint operator. Such operators arose naturally in the work on integra ...
References
Sources
*
Jagdish Mehra
Jagdish Mehra (April 8, 1931 – September 14, 2008) was an Indian-American historian of science.
Academic career
Mehra was educated at Allahabad University, the Max Planck Institut für Physik and the University of California at Los Angeles a ...
,
Helmut Rechenberg
Helmut Rechenberg (born November 6, 1937, in Berlin; died November 10, 2016, in Munich) was a German physicist and science historian.
Rechenberg studied mathematics, physics and astronomy at the University of Munich and graduated in 1964. At Mun ...
, ''The historical development of quantum theory'', Springer, 2000, p. 418
* Sanford L. Segal, ''Mathematicians under the Nazis'', Princeton University Press, 2003, p. 44