Rózsa Péter
Rózsa Péter [ro ː ʒɒ pe ː tɛr ], born Politzer, ( born February 17, 1905 in Budapest, † February 16, 1977 in Budapest) was a Hungarian mathematician. She has made significant contributions to the theory of recursive functions.
Life and work
Rózsa Peter studied from 1922 at the University of Budapest initially chemistry, but then turned under the influence of lectures by Josef Kürschak and Leopold Fejér of mathematics. In 1927, she received her degree and taught as a teacher. After they had heard of Gödel's theorem, it developed its own access with recursive functions over which they recited at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich in 1932. In 1935 she received her doctorate "summa cum laude" in Budapest. In 1937 she was co-editor of the Journal of Symbolic Logic. From 1939 she received as a Jew banned from teaching and was also a short time in the ghetto of Budapest.
During the Second World War, in which she lost her brother and many friends, she wrote, inter alia, a popular book ( "Play with the Infinite " ), which was translated into 14 languages. In 1945 she was a lecturer at the Pedagogical University in Budapest. In 1951 her book " Recursive Functions", which went through many editions and earned her the Kossuth Prize of the Hungarian state. 1955 simplified Péter the first known non- primitive recursive function ( Ackermann function) with the same properties to their current form, since this also Ackermann- Péter function is called. In the same year she became a professor at the University of Budapest, where she remained until her retirement in 1976.
In 1970 she was awarded the Hungarian State Prize in silver, 1973 gold. 1953 she received the Mano Beke price of the János Bolyai Society. In 1973, she was inducted into the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Writings
- Recursive functions, Budapest 1951 ( English Academic Press, 3rd edition 1967)
- The game with the Infinite. Mathematics for outsiders, Teubner 1955, 1966 (English Playing with Infinity. Mathematics for everyone, Dover 1976)
- Mathematics is beautiful, Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol 12, 1990, p 58 (first in mathematics at school, vol 2, 1964, p 81), with biography of Leon Harkleroad, Edie Morris
- Recursive functions in the Komputertheorie, Budapest 1976