Leonard Carlitz

Leonard Carlitz ( born December 26, 1907 in Philadelphia, † September 17, 1999 in Pittsburgh ) was an American mathematician.

Life and work

Leonard Carlitz fell early on by his mathematical talent and studied on a scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania (Bachelor 1927), where he received his doctorate in 1930 at Howard Mitchell ( Galois fields of Certain types). 1930/31 he was at Caltech with Eric Temple Bell and 1931/32 at Cambridge University in Godfrey Harold Hardy. From 1932 until his retirement in 1977 he was a professor at Duke University, most recently as James B. Duke Professor of Mathematics.

Carlitz published a total of 771 scientific papers, mostly on number theory, theory of finite fields ( Galois field ), commutative rings ( polynomial ), special functions and combinatorics.

From 1938 to 1973 he was co-editor of the Duke Mathematical Journal. He had 45 doctoral students.

He was married to Clara scaler since 1931 and had two sons.