Birkhoff, George David
Birkhoff, George David,
1884–1944, American mathematician, b. Overisel, Mich.; father of Garrett BirkhoffBirkhoff, Garrett, 1911–96, American mathematician, b. Princeton, N.J.; son of George David Birkhoff. He was educated at Harvard (B.A., 1932) where he was elected a fellow in 1933 and taught until his retirement in 1981.
..... Click the link for more information. . The son of a physician, he was educated at Harvard (B.A., 1905) and the Univ. of Chicago (Ph.D., 1907) After teaching shortly at Chicago and Princeton, he joined the faculty at Harvard (1912) where he taught until his death. Birkhoff, perhaps the first American mathematician of international repute, is known for his work on linear differential equations and difference equations. He was also deeply interested in and made contributions to the analysis of dynamical systems, celestial mechanics, the four-color map problem, and function spaces. In addition he wrote on the foundations of relativity and quantum mechanics and on art and music, e.g., Aesthetic Measure (1933).
Bibliography
See his Collected Mathematical Papers (3 vol., 1950).
Birkhoff, George David
Born Mar. 21, 1884, in Overisel, Michigan; died Nov. 12,1944, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. American mathematician. Member of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.
Birkhoff was an assistant, then a professor at Harvard University (from 1912). He contributed works in statistical mechanics (ergodic theorems), theoretical mechanics (he established stability criteria of motion and the existence of periodic motion), and also a general theory of differential and difference equations, and a theory of dynamic systems. In his studies in mechanics he applied extensively the methods of topology and set theory.
WORKS
Collected Mathematical Papers, vols. 1–3. New York, 1950. (The third volume contains a bibliography of Birkhoff s works.)In Russian translation:
Dinamicheskie sistemy. Moscow-Leningrad, 1941.