Kurt Otto Friedrichs

Kurt Otto Friedrichs ( born September 28, 1901 in Kiel, † December 31, 1982 in New Rochelle, New York ) was a German - American mathematician. His main work was in the field of partial differential equations in mathematical physics.

Life

Frederick was the son of a lawyer and grew up in Dusseldorf. He studied in Dusseldorf, Greifswald, Freiburg, Graz and Göttingen. He received his Ph.D. in 1925 under Richard Courant at Göttingen on the boundary value and eigenvalue problems in the theory of elastic plates. He also worked on existence theorems for partial differential equations, numerical methods for partial differential equations and hyperbolic partial differential equations and has been involved from the Courant to work on the book Mathematical Methods of Physics by Courant and Hilbert. In this context, the Courant -Friedrichs - Lewy condition with Courant and his fellow student Hans Lewy was born. After the assistant time in Göttingen, he was assistant in 1927 and then professor at the RWTH Aachen ( in Theodore von Karman ), after the Habilitation in 1929 Privatdozent at Göttingen and in 1930 professor at the Technical University Braunschweig. Due to the political situation after the seizure of power by the National Socialists, he tried on a visit in 1935 at the now emigrated Courant in New York is also a position in the USA.

Frederick and his Jewish girlfriend Nellie Bruell emigrated in 1937 in the USA, where they were married on August 11, 1937. They had five children. Frederick followed Courant at New York University, where it built a new Institute for Applied Mathematics ( Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences ). Frederick was at first a visiting professor at New York University, from 1939 Associate Professor and then Professor at the Courant Institute. From 1974, he was there Distinguished Professor of Mathematics.

The Lax- Friedrichs method for the numerical solution of hyperbolic partial differential equations and the Friedrichs extension associated with his name.

Among his doctoral Peter Lax (1949) and Cathleen Synge Morawetz.

For his scientific achievements, he five times the honorary doctorate was awarded, among others, in 1980 from the Technical University of Braunschweig, and of the RWTH Aachen, Uppsala University, New York University and Columbia University. Since 1959 he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1976 he received the National Medal of Science. In Brunswick, where Frederick and Bruell 1937 emigrated recalls a personality panel to the couple.

Writings

  • Selecta. 2 volumes, Birkhäuser, 1986 ( editor Cathleen Synge Morawetz ).
  • Lectures on advanced ordinary differential equations. New York University. Gordon and Breach 1965, 1985.
  • Mathematical aspects of the quantum theory of fields. Interscience 1953.
  • Mathematical methods of electromagnetic theory. Courant Institute in 1974.
  • Perturbation of spectra in Hilbert space. American Mathematical Society, 1967, 2008 ( Based on lectures at the Summer Seminar in Applied Mathematics, Boulder, 1960).
  • Special topics in fluid dynamics. Gordon and Breach 1966.
  • Spectral theory of operators in Hilbert space. Courant Institute in 1961.
  • With P. Le Corbeiller, Norman Levinson JJ Stoker: Non- linear mechanics. Providence, Rhode Iceland 1943.
  • From Pythagoras to Einstein. Random House 1966.
  • Richard von Mises Fluid Dynamics, Providence, Rhode Iceland 1942, Springer Verlag 1971.
  • Pseudo- differential operator - an introduction, Courant Institute in 1968.
  • R. Courant, K. Friedrichs, Hans Lewy: On the partial difference equations of mathematical physics. In: Mathematical Annals, Volume 100, 1928, pp. 32-74. online
Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy condition Theodore von Kármán James J. Stoker Integrated Authority File
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