Marc Kac
| Mark Kac | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
August 3, 1914 Krzemieniec |
| Died | October 26, 1984 (aged 70) California |
| Residence | USA |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Citizenship | Poland, USA |
| Alma mater | Lwów University |
| Known for |
Feynman–Kac formula Erdős–Kac theorem |
| Awards |
Chauvenet Prize (1950, 1968) Birkhoff Prize (1978) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions |
Cornell University Rockefeller University University of Southern California |
| Doctoral advisor | Hugo Steinhaus |
| Doctoral students |
Harry Kesten William LeVeque William Newcomb Lonnie Cross Murray Rosenblatt Daniel Stroock |
Mark Kac (/kɑːts/ KAHTS; Polish: Marek Kac; August 3, 1914 – October 26, 1984) was a Polish American mathematician. He was born to a Polish-Jewish family; their town, Kremenets (Polish: "Krzemieniec"), changed hands from the Russian Empire to Poland when Kac was a child. His main interest was probability theory. His question, "Can one hear the shape of a drum?" set off research into spectral theory, with the idea of understanding the extent to which the spectrum allows one to read back the geometry. (In the end, the answer was "no", in general.)
Kac completed his Ph.D. in mathematics at the Polish University of Lwów in 1937 under the direction of Hugo Steinhaus. While there, he was a member of the Lwów School of Mathematics. After receiving his degree he began to look for a position abroad, and in 1938 was granted a scholarship from the Parnas Foundation which enabled him to go work in the United States. He arrived in New York City in November, 1938.
With the onset of World War II, Kac was able to stay in America, while his parents and brother who remained in Western Ukraine were murdered by the Germans in the mass executions in Krzemieniec in August 1942.
From 1939-61 he was at Cornell University, first as an instructor, then from 1943 as assistant professor and from 1947 as full professor. While there, he became a naturalized US citizen in 1943. In the academic year 1951–1952 Kac was on sabbatical at the Institute for Advanced Study. In 1952, Kac, with Theodore H. Berlin, introduced the spherical model of a ferromagnet (a variant of the Ising model) and, with J. C. Ward, found an exact solution of the Ising model using a combinatorial method. In 1961 he left Cornell and went to Rockefeller University in New York City. In the early 1960s he worked with George Uhlenbeck and P. C. Hemmer on the mathematics of a van der Waals gas. After twenty years at Rockefeller University, he moved to the University of Southern California where he spent the rest of his career.
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