Lars Gårding (7 March 1919 – 7 July 2014) was a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

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, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

. He made notable contributions to the study of

partial differential equation In mathematics, a partial differential equation (PDE) is an equation which imposes relations between the various partial derivatives of a Multivariable calculus, multivariable function. The function is often thought of as an "unknown" to be sol ...

s and

partial differential operator In mathematics, a differential operator is an operator defined as a function of the differentiation operator. It is helpful, as a matter of notation first, to consider differentiation as an abstract operation that accepts a function and retur ...

s. He was a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

of mathematics at

Lund University , motto = Ad utrumque , mottoeng = Prepared for both , established = , type = Public research university , budget = SEK 9 billion Marcel Riesz Marcel Riesz ( hu, Riesz Marcell ; 16 November 1886 – 4 September 1969) was a Hungarian mathematician, known for work on summation methods, potential theory, and other parts of analysis, as well as number theory, partial differential equations ...

, he was a thesis advisor for

Lars Hörmander Lars Valter Hörmander (24 January 1931 – 25 November 2012) was a Swedish mathematician who has been called "the foremost contributor to the modern theory of linear partial differential equations". Hörmander was awarded the Fields Medal ...

Biography

Gårding was born in

Hedemora Hedemora is a town in Dalarna County and the seat of Hedemora Municipality, Sweden, with 7,273 inhabitants in 2010. Despite its small population, Hedemora is for historical reasons normally still referred to as a ''city'', and as such the oldes ...

, Sweden but grew up in

Motala Motala () is a locality and the seat of Motala Municipality, Östergötland County, Sweden with 29,823 inhabitants (41,956 in the entire municipality) in 2010. It is the third largest city of Östergötland, following Linköping and Norrköping. M ...

, where his father was an engineer at the plant. He began to study mathematics in

Lund Lund (, , ) is a city in the southern Swedish provinces of Sweden, province of Scania, across the Øresund, Öresund strait from Copenhagen. The town had 91,940 inhabitants out of a municipal total of 121,510 . It is the seat of Lund Municipali ...

in 1937 with the first intention of becoming an

actuary An actuary is a business professional who deals with the measurement and management of risk and uncertainty. The name of the corresponding field is actuarial science. These risks can affect both sides of the balance sheet and require asset man ...

. His doctorate thesis, which was written under supervision of Marcel Riesz, was first on

group representations In the mathematical field of representation theory, group representations describe abstract groups in terms of bijective linear transformations of a vector space to itself (i.e. vector space automorphisms); in particular, they can be used t ...

in 1944, but in the following years he changed his research focus to the theory of

partial differential equations In mathematics, a partial differential equation (PDE) is an equation which imposes relations between the various partial derivatives of a multivariable function. The function is often thought of as an "unknown" to be solved for, similarly to ...

. He held the professorship of mathematics at

Lund University , motto = Ad utrumque , mottoeng = Prepared for both , established = , type = Public research university , budget = SEK 9 billion Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences ( sv, Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien) is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special ...

in 1953. Gårding died on 7 July 2014, aged 95.

Selected works

;Books * 1977. ''Encounter with Mathematics'', 1st Edition. * 2013. ''Encounter with Mathematics'', softcover reprint of the 1st 1977 edition. Springer ;Articles * *

References

External links

* 1919 births 2014 deaths 20th-century Swedish mathematicians People connected to Lund University Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences PDE theorists {{Sweden-mathematician-stub