Karl Löwner and his student Lipman Bers
Subtitle: pre-war Prague mathematicians
By: Martina Bečvářová, Ivan Netuka
Contributors: Netuka, Ivan, author
Series: Heritage of European Mathematics; Heritage of European mathematics
Publisher: European Mathematical Society Publishing House
Published: 2015
Place of publication: Zürich
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9783037191446; 9783037196441
Subjects: Bibliography; Mathematicians; Biography; Mathematics; Mathématiciens; Biographies; Mathématiques; History of mathematics; Number theory; History and biography
Description: This monograph is devoted to two distinguished mathematicians, Karel Löwner (1893-1968) and Lipman Bers (1914-1993), whose lives are dramatically interlinked with key historical events of the 20th century. K. Löwner, Professor of Mathematics at the German University in Prague (Czechoslovakia), was dismissed from his position because he was a Jew, and emigrated to the USA in 1939 (where he changed his name to Charles Loewner). Earlier, he had published several outstanding papers in complex analysis and a masterpiece on matrix functions. In particular, his ground-breaking parametric method in geometric function theory from 1923, which led to Löwner's celebrated differential equation, brought him world-wide fame and turned out to be a cornerstone in de Branges' proof of the Bieberbach conjecture. Unexpectedly, Löwner's differential equation has gained recent prominence with the introduction of a conformally invariant stochastic process called stochastic Loewner evolution (SLE) by O. Schramm in 2000. SLE features in two Fields Medal citations from 2006 and 2010. L. Bers was the final Prague Ph.D. student of K. Löwner. His dissertation on potential theory (1938), completed shortly before his emigration and long thought to be irretrievably lost, was found in 2006. It is here made accessible for the first time, with an extensive commentary, to the mathematical community. This monograph presents an in-depth account of the lives of both mathematicians, with special emphasis on the pre-war period. Löwner's teaching activities and professional achievements are presented in the context of the prevailing complex political situation and against the background of the wider development of mathematics in Europe. Each of his publications is accompanied by an extensive commentary, tracing the origin and motivation of the problem studied, and describing the state-of-art at the time of the corresponding mathematical field. Special attention is paid to the impact of the results obta...
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Table of contents: title: Brief overview of Karl Löwner's life; title: Karl Löwner: distinguished teacher and scholar; title: Publications of Karl Löwner before 1939; title: Bibliography of Karl Löwner; title: List of reviews by Karl Löwner; title: Lecture courses and seminars attended by Karl Löwner; title: Lecture courses and seminars delivered by Karl Löwner; title: Karl Löwner and dissertations at the German University in Prague; title: Karl Löwner's lectures to the mathematical community; title: Brief overview of Lipman Bers' life; title: Lipman Bers: the final doctoral student of Löwner in Prague; title: L. Bers' dissertation on potential theory; title: Harmonisches Mass im Raume; title: Karl Löwner and Lipman Bers according to Marian Tracy's memory; title: Karl Löwner and Lipman Bers: Ruth Bers Shapiro recalls their friendship.