Aryeh Dvoretzky

Aryeh Dvoretzky 1962

Aryeh (Arie) Dvoretzky (Hebrew: אריה דבורצקי, Russian: Арье Дворецкий; May 3, 1916 – May 8, 2008) was a Russian born Israeli mathematician, the winner of the 1973 Israel Prize in Mathematics. He is best known for his work in functional analysis, statistics and probability.

Biography

Dvoretzky was born in 1916 in Khorol, Imperial Russia (now Ukraine). His family moved to Palestine in 1922. He received his Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1941. His advisor was Michael Fekete. He continued working in Jerusalem, becoming a Full Professor in 1951, the first graduate of the Hebrew University to achieve this distinction. Dvoretzky later became the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences (1955–1956) and Vice President of the Hebrew University (1959–1961).

Dvoretzky had visiting appointments at a number of universities, including Collège de France, Columbia University, Purdue University, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley. He also visited twice the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (in 1948–1950 and in 1957–1958). In 1975 he founded the Institute for Advanced Studies of Jerusalem based on the Princeton IAS model. He was elected president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (1974–1980) and later became the eighth president of the Weizmann Institute of Science (1986–1989). He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Tel Aviv University in 1996.

Dvoretzky made his expertize available to the Israel security establishment. In 1960 he became the head of Rafael, the weapons development authority. He later became the chief scientist for the Israel Ministry of Defense.

Dvoretzky's son Gideon was killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Aryeh Dvoretzky's students included Branko Grünbaum and Joram Lindenstrauss.

See also

• Dvoretzky's theorem
• Dvoretzky–Kiefer–Wolfowitz inequality
• Dvoretzky–Rogers theorem
• List of Israel Prize recipients

External links

• Aryeh Dvoretzky at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Webpage at the Wetizmann Institute
• 1966 interview in Moscow, Russia; Eugene Dynkin Collection of Mathematics Interviews, Cornell University Library.

See also: Dvoretzky