Tibor Radó (June 2, 1895 – December 29, 1965) was a Hungarian

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 ...

who moved to the United States after

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

Biography

Radó was born in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

and between 1913 and 1915 attended the

Polytechnic Institute An institute of technology (also referred to as: technological university, technical university, university of technology, technological educational institute, technical college, polytechnic university or just polytechnic) is an institution of te ...

, studying

civil engineering Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewa ...

. In

, he became a First Lieutenant in the Hungarian Army and was captured on the Russian Front. He escaped from a Siberian prisoner camp and, traveling thousands of miles across

Arctic The Arctic ( or ) is a polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm (Greenland), Finland, Iceland, N ...

wasteland, managed to return to Hungary. He received a doctorate from the

Franz Joseph University Royal Hungarian Franz Joseph University ( hu, Magyar Királyi Ferenc József Tudományegyetem) was the second modern university in the Hungarian realm of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Founded in 1872, its seat was initially in Kolozsvár (Clu ...

in 1923. He taught briefly at the university and then became a research fellow in Germany for the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1929, he moved to the United States and lectured 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 work ...

before obtaining a faculty position in the Department of Mathematics at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

in 1930. In 1935 he was granted American citizenship. In

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

he was a science consultant to the United States government, interrupting his academic career. He became Chairman of the Department of Mathematics at Ohio State University in 1948. In the 1920s, he proved that

surface A surface, as the term is most generally used, is the outermost or uppermost layer of a physical object or space. It is the portion or region of the object that can first be perceived by an observer using the senses of sight and touch, and is ...

s have an essentially unique triangulation. In 1933, Radó published "On the Problem of Plateau" in which he gave a solution to

Plateau's problem In mathematics, Plateau's problem is to show the existence of a minimal surface with a given boundary, a problem raised by Joseph-Louis Lagrange in 1760. However, it is named after Joseph Plateau who experimented with soap films. The problem ...

, and in 1935, "Subharmonic Functions". His work focused on computer science in the last decade of his life and in May 1962 he published one of his most famous results in the '' Bell System Technical Journal'': the busy beaver function and its non-computability ("On Non-Computable Functions"). He died in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.

Works

''Über den Begriff der Riemannschen Fläche''
Acta Scientarum Mathematicarum Universitatis Szegediensis, 1925
''The problem of least area and the problem of Plateau'', Mathematische Zeitschrift Vol. 32, 1930, p.763
* ''On the problem of Plateau'', Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete, 1933, 1951, 1971 * ''Subharmonic Functions'', Springer, Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete, 1937 * ''Length and Area'', AMS Colloquium Lectures, 1948 *with Paul V. Reichelderfer ''Continuous transformations in analysis - with an introduction to algebraic topology'', Springer 1955
''On Non-Computable Functions''
Bell System Technical Journal 41/196
scan
* ''Computer studies of Turing machine problems'', Journal of the ACM 12/1965

References

External links

* *
Biography
from the

and other links {{DEFAULTSORT:Rado, Tibor 1895 births 1965 deaths 20th-century Hungarian mathematicians Hungarian emigrants to the United States 20th-century American mathematicians Franz Joseph University alumni Harvard University staff Rice University faculty Ohio State University faculty Austro-Hungarian mathematicians

Biography

Works

See also

References

External links