Hans Lewy

Hans Lewy ( born October 20, 1904 in Breslau, † August 23, 1988 in Berkeley, California ) was a German-born mathematician who worked in the U.S. after his emigration. Lewy worked all his life with Analysis of partial differential equations, and has received several prestigious awards for his work.

Life and work

Lewy studied in Göttingen and received his doctorate there in 1926 Richard Courant an approach for the numerical solution of boundary value problem. In 1927, he received a job there as a lecturer and published in 1928 Courant and Friedrichs work over the partial difference equations of mathematical physics, which is named after the three CFL condition, a fundamental criterion of stability in the numerical analysis of time-dependent partial differential equations has been introduced.

After the handover of power to the NSDAP in 1933 Lewy was dismissed. He emigrated via France to the United States and in 1935 professor at Berkeley.

Lewy dealt with the theory of water waves and gave in 1957 in an influential work is an example of a simple partial differential equation without solution, which then surprised the mathematician. This example, also known as Lewy's example shows that the set of Malgrange and Ehrenpreis to the existence of a solution with constant coefficients can not be extended to polynomials as coefficients.

For his work in 1979 he was awarded the Leroy P. Steele Prize of the American Mathematical Society and in 1985 with the Wolf Prize. In 1950 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM ) in Cambridge (Massachusetts ) ( Developments at the confluence of analytic boundary conditions ).

His doctoral David kid teacher belongs.