Karol Borsuk

Karol Borsuk ( born May 8, 1905 in Warsaw, † January 24, 1982 ) was a Polish mathematician.

Life

He studied at the University of Warsaw ( completion 1927) and received his PhD in 1930 with Stefan Mazurkiewicz ( Sur les rétractes ). In Lvov, he learned Stanisław Ulam know and worked with him. After Germany occupied during World War II Poland, Polish intellectuals were persecuted, and Borsuk had to hide. After the war Borsuk played an important role in the reconstruction of the Polish education system and from 1946 was professor of mathematics in Warsaw.

His main interest was the topology, such as the homotopy theory. He introduced in his dissertation Retrakte, and also Kohomotopie groups and Shape Theory ( 1968 ) go back to him. According to him, the Borsuk Ulam and 1933 proved Borsuk -Ulam theorem is named, also his name is connected with the famous 1993 disproved Borsuk 's conjecture, the Borsuk had formulated in the same article as an open question.

In 1954 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Amsterdam ( via the elimination of paradoxical phenomena in the topology, held in French).

From 1956 he was a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences.