Matsusaburo Fujiwara (, ''Fujiwara Matsusaburō'', 14 February 1881,

Tsu, Mie is a city located in Mie Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 274,879 in 127,273 households and a population density of 390 persons per km². The total area of the city is . Although the second largest city in the p ...

– 12 October 1946,

Fukushima may refer to: Japan * Fukushima Prefecture, Japanese prefecture ** Fukushima, Fukushima, capital city of Fukushima Prefecture, Japan ***Fukushima University, national university in Japan *** Fukushima Station (Fukushima) in Fukushima, Fukushim ...

) was a Japanese mathematician and historian of mathematics.

Education and career

Fujiwara graduated in June 1902 from secondary school at the Third Higher School in Kyoto and then studied mathematics at the

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project b ...

, where he graduated in 1905. His most important teacher was Rikitaro Fujisawa (1861–1933). In 1906 he became a secondary school teacher at the First Higher School ''Daiichi Kōtō Gakkō'' in Tokyo. In 1908 Fujiwara and Tsuruichi Hayashi (1873–1935) were appointed professors at

Tohoku University , or is a Japanese national university located in Sendai, Miyagi in the Tōhoku Region, Japan. It is informally referred to as . Established in 1907, it was the third Imperial University in Japan and among the first three Designated Natio ...

Sendai is the capital city of Miyagi Prefecture, the largest city in the Tōhoku region. , the city had a population of 1,091,407 in 525,828 households, and is one of Japan's 20 designated cities. The city was founded in 1600 by the ''daimyō'' Date M ...

. To prepare for his professorial duties, Fujiwara was sent to study from 1908 to 1911 in Göttingen, Paris and Berlin.In Göttingen, Fujiwara probably studied with

David Hilbert David Hilbert (; ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician, one of the most influential mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many ...

— on the occasion of Hilbert's 60th birthday in 1922 Fujiwara published his congratulations and is included in the photo album for the occasion. After his return in February 1912, Fujiwara worked closely with his colleague Tsuruichi Hayashi, who in 1911 founded the

Tohoku Mathematical Journal The ''Tohoku Mathematical Journal'' is a mathematical research journal published by Tohoku University in Japan. It was founded in August 1911 by Tsuruichi Hayashi. History Due to World War II the publication of the journal stopped in 1943 wi ...

. The Journal published many of Fujiwara's mathematical papers.Chikara Sasaki: Fujiwara Matsusaburo, in: Joseph W. Dauben, Christoph J. Scriba (eds.)
''Writing the history of mathematics''
Birkhäuser 2002, pp. 430–431 In November 1914 he received his doctorate. Fujiwara was an important contributor to the development of the Mathematical Institute of the

. His contacts with European mathematicians made it possible to create an extensive library. He worked in the mathematical fields of analysis, geometry, and number theory and wrote more than 100 mathematical articles in German, English, and Japanese. After the death of his colleague Hayashi in 1935, Fujiwara intensively studied the history of ''wasan'', ''i.e.'' traditional

Japanese mathematics denotes a distinct kind of mathematics which was developed in Japan during the Edo period (1603–1867). The term ''wasan'', from ''wa'' ("Japanese") and ''san'' ("calculation"), was coined in the 1870s and employed to distinguish native Japanese ...

. In 1928–1929 his two-volume algebra textbook was published, and from 1934 to 1939 his two-volume analysis textbook was published.Sasaki, Chikara
"The emergence of the Japanese mathematical community in the modern Western style, 1855–1945."
in ''Mathematics Unbound'' ed. by Parshall & Rice (2002): 229–252. His manuscript (about eight thousand pages) on the history of mathematics in Japan survived the bombing of Sendai in July 1945 and was published posthumously in 5 volumes from 1954 to 1960 by the Japan Academy. From historians active in the first half of the twentieth century, Matsusaburo Fujiwara and

Yoshio Mikami was a Japanese mathematician and historian of '' Japanese mathematics''. He was born February 16, 1875, in Kotachi, Hiroshima prefecture. He attended the High School of Tohoku University, and in 1911 was admitted to the Imperial University of To ...

are considered the two leading historians of ''wasan''. In 1925 he and the mathematician

Teiji Takagi Teiji Takagi (高木貞治 ''Takagi Teiji'', April 21, 1875 – February 28, 1960) was a Japanese mathematician, best known for proving the Takagi existence theorem in class field theory. The Blancmange curve, the graph of a nowhere-differentiabl ...

were elected to the

Japan Academy The Japan Academy ( Japanese: 日本学士院, ''Nihon Gakushiin'') is an honorary organisation and science academy founded in 1879 to bring together leading Japanese scholars with distinguished records of scientific achievements. The Academy is ...

. While Takagi was considered the more original researcher (on the basis of contributions to class field theory), Fujiwara was known for his scholarship. In 1936 Fujiwara was an Invited Speaker of the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be rena ...

in Oslo.

Selected publications

*''Meiji-zen Nippon Sugakushi'' (history of mathematics in Japan before the Meiji era), 5 vols., 1954 to 1960 *''Nippon Sugakushi-yo'' (brief history of Japanese mathematics), 1952 *''Seiyo Sugakushi'' (history of western mathematics from antiquity to Euler), 1956 * (with

Sōichi Kakeya was a Japanese mathematician who worked mainly in mathematical analysis and who posed the Kakeya problem and solved a version of the transportation problem. He received the Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy in 1928, and was elected to the Japa ...

): ''On some problems of maxima and minima for the curve of constant breadth and the in-revolvable curve of the equilateral triangle'', Tōhoku Math. J. 11, 92–110, 1917 * ''Ein Problem aus der Theorie der diophantischen Approximationen'', lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1936 in Oslo
online

References

External links

* Nachlass ''David Hilbert'', Findbuch, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen
online

Tohoku Math. J. First Series Volume Index - Tohoku University

PAPERS COMMUNICATED 72. Asymptotic Operational Calculus. By Matsusaburo FUJIWARA, M.LA. MathematicalInstitute, TohokuImperial University, Sendai.(Comm.Nov. 13, 1939.)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fujiwara, Matsusaburo 1881 births 1946 deaths 19th-century Japanese mathematicians 20th-century Japanese mathematicians Members of the Japan Academy Historians of mathematics