# Walter Rudin

Walter Rudin
Born May 2, 1921
Vienna, Austria
Died May 20, 2010 (aged 89)
Nationality American
Fields Mathematics
Institutions Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Alma mater Duke University (B.A. 1947, Ph.D. 1949)
Doctoral advisor John Jay Gergen
Doctoral students Charles Dunkl
Daniel Rider
Known for Mathematics textbooks; contributions to harmonic analysis and complex analysis[1]
Notable awards American Mathematical Society Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition (1993)

Walter Rudin (May 2, 1921 – May 20, 2010)[2] was an Austrian-American mathematician and professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[3]

He is known for three books on mathematical analysis: Principles of Mathematical Analysis, Real and Complex Analysis, and Functional Analysis. The first (affectionately referred to as "Baby Rudin") was written when Rudin was a Moore instructor at MIT for his undergraduate analysis course and is widely used as a textbook for undergraduate courses in analysis.

## Biography

Rudin was born into a Jewish family in Austria in 1921. They fled to France after the Anschluss in 1938. When France surrendered to Germany in 1940, Rudin fled to England and served in the British navy for the rest of the war. After the war he left for the United States, and earned his B.A. from Duke University in North Carolina in 1947, and two years later earned a Ph.D. from the same institution. After that he was a C.L.E. Moore instructor at MIT, briefly taught in the University of Rochester, before becoming a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He remained at the University for 32 years.[2] His research interests ranged from harmonic analysis to complex analysis. In 1970 he was an Invited Speaker at the ICM in Nice.[4] He received an honorary degree from the University of Vienna in 2006.

In 1953, he married fellow mathematician Mary Ellen Estill. The two resided in Madison, Wisconsin, in the eponymous Walter Rudin House, a home designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. They had four children.[1]

Rudin died on May 20, 2010 after suffering from Parkinson's disease.[2]

## Selected publications

Ph.D. thesis
• Rudin, Walter (1950). Uniqueness Theory for Laplace Series (Thesis). Duke University.[5]
Research articles
Books
• Principles of Mathematical Analysis.
• Real and Complex Analysis.[6]
• Functional Analysis.
• Fourier Analysis on Groups.[7]
• Function Theory in Polydiscs.
• Function Theory in the Unit Ball of Cn.[8]
• The Way I Remember It. 1991. (Autobiography)