Stefan Emanuel "Steve" Warschawski (April 18, 1904 – May 5, 1989) was a Russian-born American mathematician, a professor and department chair at the
University of Minnesota and the founder of the mathematics department at the
University of California, San Diego.
Early life and education
Warschawski was born in
Lida, now in
Belarus; at the time of his birth Lida was part of the
Russian Empire.
[.][.][.] His father was a Russian medical doctor, and his mother was ethnically German;
[.] the family spoke German at home.
In 1915, his family moved to
Königsberg, in
Prussia (now
Kaliningrad,
Russia), the home of his mother's family.
Warschawski studied at the
University of Königsberg until 1926 and then moved to the
University of Göttingen for his doctoral studies under the supervision of
Alexander Ostrowski.
Ostrowski moved to the
University of Basel and Warschawski followed him there to complete his studies.
Career
After receiving his Ph.D., Warschawski took a position at Göttingen in 1930 but, due to the rise of
Hitler and his own Jewish ancestry, he soon moved to
Utrecht University in
Utrecht,
Netherlands and then
Columbia University in
New York City.
After a sequence of temporary positions, he found a permanent faculty position at
Washington University in St. Louis in 1939.
During
World War II he moved to
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
and then the University of Minnesota, where he remained until his 1963 move to San Diego, where he was the founding chair of the mathematics department.
[.] Warschawski stepped down as chair in 1967,
and retired in 1971, but remained active in research: approximately one third of his research publications were written after his retirement.
Over the course of his career, he advised 19 Ph.D. students, all but one at either Minnesota or San Diego.
is among Warschawski's doctoral students.
Research
Warschawski was known for his research on
complex analysis
Complex analysis, traditionally known as the theory of functions of a complex variable, is the branch of mathematical analysis that investigates Function (mathematics), functions of complex numbers. It is helpful in many branches of mathemati ...
and in particular on
conformal map
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\in ...
s. He also made contributions to the theory of
minimal surfaces and
harmonic functions.
The Noshiro–Warschawski theorem is named after Warschawski and Noshiro, who discovered it independently; it states that, if ''f'' is an
analytic function on the open
unit disk
In mathematics, the open unit disk (or disc) around ''P'' (where ''P'' is a given point in the plane), is the set of points whose distance from ''P'' is less than 1:
:D_1(P) = \.\,
The closed unit disk around ''P'' is the set of points whose di ...
such that the
real part of its
first derivative is
positive, then ''f'' is
one-to-one
One-to-one or one to one may refer to:
Mathematics and communication
*One-to-one function, also called an injective function
*One-to-one correspondence, also called a bijective function
*One-to-one (communication), the act of an individual comm ...
.
In 1980, he solved the
Visser–Ostrowski problem for derivatives of conformal mappings at the boundary.
Burton Rodin
Burton Rodin is an American mathematician known for his research in conformal mappings and Riemann surfaces. He is a professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego.
Education
Rodin received a Ph.D. at the University of California, ...
and S. E. Warschawski, “On the derivative of the Riemann mapping function near a boundary point and the Visser-Ostrowski problem”, Mathematische Annalen, 248, (1980), 125–137.
Legacy
Warschawski was honored in 1978 by the creation of the Stefan E. Warschawski Assistant Professorship at San Diego.
The Stephen E. Warschawski Memorial Scholarship was also given in his name in 1999–2000 to four UCSD undergraduates as a one-time award.
His wife, Ilse, died in 2009 and left a US$1 million bequest to UCSD, part of which went towards endowing a professorship in the mathematics department.
[.]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Warschawski, Stefan E.
1904 births
1989 deaths
People from Lida
People from Lidsky Uyezd
Mathematical analysts
20th-century American mathematicians
University of Königsberg alumni
University of Göttingen alumni
University of Basel alumni
Academic staff of the University of Göttingen
Academic staff of Utrecht University
Columbia University faculty
Washington University in St. Louis faculty
Washington University in St. Louis mathematicians
Brown University faculty
University of Minnesota faculty
University of California, San Diego faculty
Emigrants from the Russian Empire
Immigrants to the German Empire
Immigrants to the United States