Stefan Bergman

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Stefan Bergman
Bergman in Zürich, 1932
Born(1895-05-05)May 5, 1895
DiedJune 6, 1977(1977-06-06) (aged 82)
EducationUniversity of Vienna
University of Berlin
Known forBergman kernel
Bergman metric
Bergman space
SpouseAdele Adlersberg
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Berlin
Tomsk State University
MIT
Yeshiva University
Brown University
Stanford University
ThesisÜber die Entwicklung der harmonischen Funktionen der Ebene und des Raumes nach Orthogonalfunktionen (1922)
Doctoral advisorRichard von Mises
Doctoral studentsMichael Maschler

Stefan Bergman (5 May 1895 – 6 June 1977) was a Congress Poland-born American mathematician whose primary work was in complex analysis. He is known for the kernel function he discovered in 1922 at University of Berlin. This function is now known as the Bergman kernel. Bergman taught for many years at Stanford University.[1]

Biography[edit]

Born in Częstochowa, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, to a German Jewish family,[2] Bergman received his Ph.D. at University of Berlin in 1921 for a dissertation on Fourier analysis. His advisor, Richard von Mises, had a strong influence on him, lasting for the rest of his career.[3] In 1933, Bergman was forced to leave his post at the Berlin University because he was a Jew. He fled first to Russia, where he stayed until 1939, and then to Paris. In 1939, he emigrated to the United States, where he would remain for the rest of life.[3] He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1951.[4] He was a professor at Stanford University from 1952 until his retirement in 1972.[5] He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1950 in Cambridge, Massachusetts[6] and in 1962 in Stockholm (On meromorphic functions of several complex variables).[7] He died in Palo Alto, California, aged 82.

Bergman Prize[edit]

The Stefan Bergman Prize in mathematics was initiated by Bergman's wife in her will, in memory of her husband's work. The American Mathematical Society supports the prize and selects the committee of judges.[8] The prize is awarded for:[8]

  1. the theory of the kernel function and its applications in real and complex analysis; or
  2. function-theoretic methods in the theory of partial differential equations of elliptic type with a special attention to Bergman's and related operator methods.

Selected publications[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Stefan Bergman at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. ^ O'Connor & Robertson, Stefan Bergman.
  3. ^ a b O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Stefan Bergman", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews.
  4. ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved June 16, 2011.
  5. ^ Stefan Bergman papers, circa 1940–1972 in SearchWorks, Stanford University Libraries
  6. ^ Bergman, Stefan. "On visualization of domains in the theory of functions of two complex variables." Archived 2016-10-03 at the Wayback Machine In Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, vol. 1, pp. 363–373. 1950.
  7. ^ Bergman, S. "On meromorphic functions of several complex variables, Abstract of short communications." Internat. Congr. Math., Stockholm (1962): 63.
  8. ^ a b Other Prizes and Awards Supported by the AMS
  9. ^ See the review by Gelbart, Abe (1942). "Review: Stefan Bergman, Sur les fonctions orthogonales de plusieurs variables complexes avec les applications à la théorie des fonctions analytiques". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 48 (1): 15–18. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1942-07606-3..
  10. ^ See the review by Behnke, H. (1951). "Review: Stefan Bergman, Sur la fonction-noyau d'un domaine et ses applications dans la théorie du transformations pseudo-conformes". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 57 (3): 186–188. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1951-09483-5..
  11. ^ Behnke, H. (1952). "Review: Stefan Bergman, The kernel function and conformal mapping". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 58 (1): 76–78. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1952-09553-7.
  12. ^ Henrici, Peter (1955). "Review: S. Bergman and M. Schiffer, Kernel Functions and elliptic differential equations in mathematical physics". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 61 (6): 596–600. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1955-10005-5.
  13. ^ Kreyszig, Erwin (1962). "Review: Stefan Bergman, Integral operators in the theory of linear partial differential equations". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 68 (3): 161–162. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1962-10724-1.

External links[edit]