Leon Lichtenstein | |
---|---|
Born |
Warsaw, Russian Empire |
16 May 1878
Died | 21 August 1933 Zakopane, Poland |
(aged 55)
Nationality | Polish |
Fields | Mathematics |
Institutions | University of Leipzig |
Alma mater | University of Berlin |
Doctoral advisor |
Hermann Schwarz Friedrich Schottky |
Doctoral students |
Hermann Boerner Ernst Hölder Erich Kähler Karl Maruhn Aurel Wintner |
Leon Lichtenstein (16 May 1878 – 21 August 1933) was a Polish-German mathematician, who made contributions to the areas of differential equations, conformal mapping, and potential theory. He was also interested in theoretical physics, publishing research in hydrodynamics and astronomy.
Leon Lichtenstein was born on 16 May 1878, to an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Warsaw, then part of the Russian Empire. His cousin, Leo Wiener, was the father of MIT mathematician Norbert Wiener. He studied in Berlin, earning both a doctorate in mechanical and electrical engineering at the Technische Hochschule Berlin and a doctorate in mathematics at the Friedrich Wilhelm University with a thesis on differential equations written under the supervision of Hermann Schwarz and Friedrich Schottky. From 1902 he worked as an electrical engineer for Siemens & Halske, then, from 1910, he turned to the academic world by becoming privatdozent at the Berlin Technische Hochschule. Lichtenstein was one of the founders, in 1918, and the first editor of the journal Mathematische Zeitschrift. In 1920 he moved to a mathematics chair at the University of Munster and in 1922 he joined the University of Leipzig where he would spend the rest of his career. At the University of Leipzig he founded a mathematical school and his students, including Ernst Hölder, Erich Kähler, Aurel Wintner, Hermann Boerner and Karl Maruhn, continuing his research in mathematics and theoretical physics.