Lothar Collatz | |
---|---|
Born |
Arnsberg, German Empire |
July 6, 1910
Died | September 26, 1990 Varna, Bulgaria |
(aged 80)
Nationality | German |
Fields | Mathematics |
Doctoral advisor |
Alfred Klose Erhard Schmidt |
Doctoral students | Frank Natterer |
Lothar Collatz (July 6, 1910 – September 26, 1990) was a German mathematician, born in Arnsberg, Westphalia. In 1937 he posed the Collatz conjecture, which remains unsolved.
The Collatz-Wielandt formula, for positive matrices important in the Perron–Frobenius theorem, is named after him.
Collatz studied at different universities in Germany including the University of Berlin under Alfred Klose, receiving his doctorate in 1935 for a dissertation entitled Das Differenzenverfahren mit höherer Approximation für lineare Differentialgleichungen (The finite difference method with higher approximation for linear differential equations).
For his many contributions to the field, Collatz had many honors bestowed upon him in his lifetime, including:
He died in Varna, Bulgaria, while attending a mathematics conference.