Leonard Carlitz
 |
Leonard Carlitz | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 26, 1907 |
| Died | September 17, 1999 (aged 91) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania |
| Known for | Carlitz identity Carlitz–Wan conjecture Al-Salam–Carlitz polynomials Tricomi–Carlitz polynomials |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Duke University |
| Doctoral advisor | Howard Mitchell |
| Doctoral students | Waleed Al-Salam S. Brent Morris David Roselle (among 44) |
Leonard Carlitz (December 26, 1907 – September 17, 1999) was an American mathematician. Carlitz supervised 44 doctorates at Duke University and published over 770 papers.
Chronology
[edit]- 1907 Born Philadelphia, PA, USA
- 1927 BA, University of Pennsylvania
- 1930 PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 1930 under Howard Mitchell, who had studied under Oswald Veblen at Princeton
- 1930–31 at Caltech with E. T. Bell
- 1931 married Clara Skaler
- 1931–32 at Cambridge with G. H. Hardy
- 1932 Joined the faculty of Duke University where he served for 45 years
- 1938 to 1973 Editorial Board Duke Mathematical Journal (Managing Editor from 1945.)
- 1939 Birth of son Michael
- 1940 Supervision of his first doctoral student E. F. Canaday, awarded 1940
- 1945 Birth of son Robert
- 1964 First James B. Duke Professor in Mathematics
- 1977 Supervised his 44th and last doctoral student, Jo Ann Lutz, awarded 1977
- 1977 Retired
- 1990 Death of wife Clara, after 59 years of marriage
- 1999 September 17 Died in Pittsburgh, PA
Mathematical work
[edit]- The Carlitz module is generalized by the Drinfeld module
- An identity regarding Bernoulli numbers
- Carlitz wrote about Bessel polynomials
- He introduced Al-Salam–Carlitz polynomials.
- Carlitz' identity for bicentric quadrilaterals
- He conjectured the Carlitz-Wan conjecture, later proved by Daqing Wan.
Publications
[edit]Leonard Carlitz published about 771 technical papers comprising approximately 7,000 pages. The effort to edit his collected works, undertaken originally by Professor John Brillhart, is ongoing.[1]
Carlitz' exceptional productivity is described by David Hayes as follows:[2]
During the early 1960s, when I was one of his graduate students, Carlitz had a National Science Foundation grant that paid for a half-time secretary. On more than one day I observed him reading a journal paper raising a question that he found of interest, that evening writing up a paper of his own answering the question, and having it typed and sent off to a journal the following day.
About 160 articles by Carlitz are about finite fields. The textbook by Rudolf Lidl and Harald Niederreiter on the topic[3] has 141 articles authored or coauthored by Carlitz in its reference list.
See also
[edit]- Bateman polynomials
- Carlitz exponential
- Carlitz polynomial (disambiguation)
- Maillet's determinant
- Reciprocal Fibonacci constant
References
[edit]- ^ Brawley, Joel V.; Brillhart, John; Gould, Henry W. (2012), "Recollections of Leonard Carlitz (including: The publications of Leonard Carlitz)", Acta Arithmetica, 152 (4): 361–405, doi:10.4064/aa152-4-3
- ^ Hayes, David R. (2001), "Leonard Carlitz (1907–1999)" (PDF), Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 48 (11): 1322–1324, ISSN 0002-9920, MR 1870635
- ^ Lidl, Rudolf; Niederreiter, Harald (1997), Finite Fields (2nd ed.), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-39231-0
Further reading
[edit]- Brawley, Joel V. (2000), "In memoriam: Leonard Carlitz (1907–1999)", Finite Fields and Their Applications, 6 (3): 203–206, doi:10.1006/ffta.2000.0276, ISSN 1071-5797, MR 1772617
- Brawley, Joel V. (1995), "Dedicated to Leonard Carlitz: the man and his work", Finite Fields and Their Applications, 1 (2): 135–151, doi:10.1006/ffta.1995.1011, ISSN 1071-5797, MR 1337739
- Howard, F. T. (2000), "In memoriam—Leonard Carlitz", Fibonacci Quarterly, 38 (4): 316, doi:10.1080/00150517.2000.12428782, ISSN 0015-0517, MR 1775253
External links
[edit]- Obituary at Duke's Math Newsletter
- Leonard Carlitz at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Leonard Carlitz", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
- zbMATH.org author profile
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