Richard Courant

Richard Courant ( born January 8, 1888 in Lublinitz, Upper Silesia, † January 27, 1972 in New York ) was a German - American mathematician.

Life

Richard Courant was born in 1888 in Lublinitz, Silesia. His father Siegmund Courant was a small businessman who came from a far- branched Jewish family. His mother Martha Courant, born friend, was the daughter of a businessman from the neighboring oil. Edith Stein was a cousin on the paternal side of Richard Courant.

His parents moved in his youth to often, to Glatz, Breslau, and finally to Berlin in 1905. Richard attended secondary school in Glatz and later the humanist king -Wilhelm -Gymnasium in Breslau. After initial difficulties, he was there as a very good student. The father's business was not very good and he was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1901. Finally, the father decided to move his business activities to Berlin. Richard Courant, however, which had begun early to independently make money as a private tutor in addition to the school, remained in Breslau. In the winter semester 1906/ 07 he began to study at the University of Breslau, first in physics, mathematics later. He found the lectures rather unsatisfactory and went to Zurich and then to Göttingen, where he became the assistant to David Hilbert. 1910 doctorate Courant there on the subject on the use of the Dirichlet principle to the problems of conformal mapping and habilitated in 1912. He was drafted into the First World War, but soon wounded and discharged from the military service. Then he returned to Göttingen, where he was named after two years in Münster in 1922 as the successor of Felix Klein Professor and later as Head of the Mathematics department.

After the seizure Courant left Germany in the summer of 1933. He spent a year at Cambridge and then went to New York, where he became professor in 1936. There he built with Kurt Friedrichs, he brought with him from Göttingen, and the young Peter Lax, a mathematical research center. The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (as it is called since 1964 ) at the University of New York is one of the world's most prestigious institutes of Applied Mathematics.

After a brief marriage to Nelly Neumann Courant was married to his second wife since 1919 with Nerina (Nina ) Runge, a daughter of Carl Runge. His son Ernest Courant is a well-known physicist, and his daughter Gertrude Moser is a biologist and wife of the mathematician Jürgen Moser.

Work

Richard Courant founded and successfully led a mathematical institute. He was also an outstanding mathematician. He developed the finite element method of Walter Ritz ( Ritz method ), which was later used by engineers and scientists, many (but was at the time of publication of Courant 1943 engineers no attention), and tipped their mathematical foundations. The method is today among others a standard procedure in the numerical solution of partial differential equations, because often concrete error estimates are possible. In particular, in quantum mechanics, it is used by default.

His textbook methods of mathematical physics with David Hilbert is well over 80 years after its publication, a standard work. It is based on lectures by Hilbert, were written almost entirely by Richard Courant.

In addition, a two-volume textbook from the twenties ( Lectures on differential and integral calculus ) for students exists in the first two semesters. These two volumes are also timeless and therefore (such as " contrast " ) is still in sale because they are very clear and understandable, in contrast to the more abstract modern representations.

In the field of computational fluid dynamics Richard Courant is primarily known for the Courant -Friedrichs - Lewy number that is important for the calculation of hyperbolic partial differential equations.

In his dissertation, Richard Courant had dealt with the Dirichlet principle and its application in the uniformization. Then he returned to later work on minimal surfaces and conformal mappings.

His book, Herbert Robbins, "What is mathematics? " ( First published 1941 ) is considered a first-class introduction.

Honors

Writings

  • With Herbert Robbins What is Mathematics? 5th edition. Springer Verlag, 2000, ISBN 354063777X (new edition edited by Ian Stewart)
  • With Adolf Hurwitz: function theory. 4th Edition ( with Helmut Röhrl ) Springer Verlag, 1922/1964 (lectures on elliptic functions and general theory of functions of Adolf Hurwitz, edited and supplemented by a section on Geometric function theory of Courant )
  • Methods of mathematical physics. 2 vols Springer Verlag, 1968 ( first 1924, 1930), completely re-edited in the English edition, Interscience, 1953, 1961, Online: Methods of Mathematical Physics 1924
  • Lectures on differential and integral calculus., 2 vols Springer Verlag, 1970 ( first 1924) English edition with Fritz John Introduction to calculus and analysis, 2 volumes, Springer Verlag 1989
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