Hua Luogeng

Hua Luogeng ,华罗庚, Huà Luogeng, Loo - Keng Hua also, ( born November 12, 1910 in Jintang, Jiangsu Province, China, † June 12, 1985 in Tokyo ) was a Chinese mathematician and number theory, algebra, analysis Numerical Mathematics and employed in the 20th century was the leading mathematician in China.

Life and work

Hua grew up in modest circumstances. Due to a typhus disease he was unable to walk later. He attended schools in Jintan and Shanghai, where he won a national abacus competition. For financial reasons, he could not complete the training and moved back in with his family, where he helped his father in his shop. 1929 appeared his first release, which in Beijing attracted the attention of professor of mathematics Xiong Qinglai ( Hiong King - Lai ) to be, who hired him in the Mathematics Department of Tsinghua University. He quickly rose to ( despite the lack of formal qualifications) and became a teacher. Hua made ​​such an impression on the traveling by Norbert Wiener, Godfrey Harold Hardy that he recommended him, who invited him to Cambridge in 1936.

Hua researched at the time already in additive number theory ( Waring problem about the representability of integers by sums -th powers ) and made at Cambridge University the acquaintance of the number theorist Harold Davenport and Hans Heilbronn. During this time he became known for his publications. In 1938 he returned to China, where he became a professor at the now relocated to Kunming Quing Hua University. Despite adverse circumstances, he managed during this time to improve Vinogradov's estimate of trigonometric sums in number theory. His results published as a book in Russia in 1947, where he was in 1946 at the invitation of Vinogradov. In 1959, his treatment of trigonometric sums in the newly begun Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences. In the late 1940s he was also at U.S. universities such as the Institute for Advanced Study. Hua dealt now with algebra ( matrix theory and classical groups, skew fields, finite fields ). In 1963 his book with Xian Classical Groups.

In 1948 he was a professor at the University of Illinois, where Raymond Ayoub received his doctorate with him. With Irving Reiner, he worked on the automorphisms of classical groups. In 1950 he was again professor in Beijing and in 1952 director of the newly formed Mathematics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the late 1950s he began to be interested in numerical analysis. He also wrote a book about it, which was not published until 1978. In the 1960s, he moved as part of a campaign of the Communist Party by factories and villages to teach the use of mathematical methods, making him very popular made ​​in China. During the Cultural Revolution in the mid- 1960s, he was placed under house arrest, and some of his manuscripts were confiscated and were lost. In 1976 he was rehabilitated and Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. On behalf of the Chinese leadership, he traveled extensively abroad to restore international contacts. 1983/84 he was at Caltech. He died at a lecture in Tokyo of a heart attack.

He was married in 1927 and had six children.

Honors

Hua was more honorary doctorates (Nancy, University of Illinois, Hong Kong). He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (1982 ), the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

Writings

• Selected Papers. Springer -Verlag 1983.
• Introduction to Number Theory. Springer -Verlag, 1982 ( first 1956).
• Harmonic Analysis of Functions of several complex variables in the classical domains. AMS 1963 ( first 1958).
• Applications of Number Theory to Numerical Analysis. Springer -Verlag, 1981 ( first 1978).
• Additive prime number theory. Teubner, 1959 ( english AMS 1965).
• Estimates of exponential sums and their applications in number theory. Encyclopedia of Mathem. Sciences, Teubner, 1959.