Hjalmar Mellin

Hjalmar Mellin
Hjalmar Mellin
Born	June 19, 1854; Liminka
Died	April 5, 1933 (aged 78); Helsinki
Nationality	Finnish
Alma mater	University of Helsinki (Ph.D., 1882)
Known for	Mellin formula; Mellin transform
	Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Helsinki University of Technology
Thesis	De algebraiska funktionerna af en oberoende variabel (1882)
Doctoral advisor	Gösta Mittag-Leffler
Doctoral students	Ernst Leonard Lindelöf

Robert Hjalmar Mellin (June 19, 1854 – April 5, 1933) was a Finnish mathematician and function theorist.

Biography

Mellin studied at the University of Helsinki and later in Berlin under Karl Weierstrass. He is chiefly remembered as the developer of the integral transform known as the Mellin transform. He studied related gamma functions, hypergeometric functions, Dirichlet series and the Riemann ζ function. He was appointed professor at the Polytechnic Institute in Helsinki, which later became Helsinki University of Technology with Mellin as first rector.

Later in his career Mellin also became known for his critical opposition to the theory of relativity; he published several papers in which he argued against the theory from a chiefly philosophical standpoint. In his private life he was known as an outspoken fennoman: a proponent of adopting Finnish as the language of state and culture in the Grand Duchy of Finland, in preference to Swedish, which had predominantly been used hitherto.