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发表于 2008-4-18 14:34:17
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1907年4月18日——芬兰数学家阿尔弗斯出生于赫尔辛基。
姓名: 拉斯·阿尔弗斯(Lars Valerian Ahlfors,1907年4月18日-1996年10月11日)
芬兰数学家,在黎曼曲面领域有突出贡献。其编写的教材《Complex Analysis》堪称以几何观念看待复分析的经典之作。他于1936年获菲尔兹奖,1981年获沃尔夫奖。
简介:
首次菲尔兹数学奖获得者。生于芬兰首都赫尔辛基。在赫尔辛基大学读书时,受到著名数学家奈望林纳等的教导。早年就解决了法国函数论专家丹儒瓦提出的一个猜想,即整函数的阶p与有限的渐近值的个数n存在着n≤ 2p的关系。1930年取得博士学位。1932~1936年在赫尔辛基大学任副教授,1936年秋应聘去美国哈佛大学任副教授,1938年回国升为教授。1945年在美国哈佛大学任教授。1953年被选为美国国家科学院院士。他还是芬兰科学院院士和瑞典、丹麦等国的皇家学会会员。他曾任美国数学会副主席,并于1962年、1973年两次被邀在国际数学家大会上作全会报告。阿尔弗斯于1935年从事覆盖面理论的研究,这个理论不仅概括了许多大定理,而且奈望林纳的理论也可由此推出。阿尔弗斯还研究了黎曼面的3g- 3维空间结构,通过拟保角映射及其他工具,获得了一系列重大成就,使这个领域成为单复变函数论最活跃的分支。他不仅在研究领域作出了创造性的贡献,而且在芬兰及美国培养了一批单复变函数论的专家。他还著书立说,把大量新的词汇(特别是拓扑学)引进书中,成为现在的标准用语,由此荣获1982年美国数学会的斯蒂尔奖。1981年荣获沃尔夫(Wolf )基金会的国际数学奖。他是同时荣获菲尔兹奖——国际数学最高奖(1936)和沃尔夫奖的屈指可数的几个数学家之一。
Lars Ahlfors (1907-1996)
Lars Valerian Ahlfors, William Caspar Graustein Professor of Mathematics, died of pneumonia on Oct. 11 in Pittsfield, Mass., at the age of 89. Ahlfors won the first Fields Medal awarded by the International Mathematics Society in 1936, a quadrennial award considered equivalent, in mathematics, to the Nobel Prize. In 1979, he was awarded the prestigious Wolf Prize in Jerusalem. Ahlfors was best known for his work in complex analysis, a fundamental subject with many applications from number theory to modern physics. His textbook, Complex Analysis, first published in 1953, with new editions in 1966 and 1979, is still considered the leading text in the field. He wrote three other mathematical books and published almost 100 papers. Colleagues and students have described his work as extraordinarily elegant, and his lectures, delivered in thundering basso, as stunningly beautiful. Ahlfors was born in Helsinki, Finland, in 1907. As he often observed, his mother's death during his birth critically influenced his life. His father, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Polytechnic Institute, was attentive but stern. In the brief autobiographical note that introduced his collected papers, published in 1982, he wrote that, "As a child, I was fascinated by mathematics without understanding what it was about, but I was by no means a child prodigy. As a matter of fact, I had no access to any mathematical literature except in the highest grades. . . . The high school curriculum did not include any calculus but I finally managed to learn some on my own, thanks to clandestine visits to my father's engineering library." Ahlfors' introduction to higher mathematics, including complex analysis, came from his mentors at Helsinki University, Ernst Lindelof and Rolf Nevanlinna. At 21, Ahlfors followed Nevanlinna to the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, where he began working at a research level. There he produced his first major work, a study of asymptotic values of an entire function, based on his own new approach to conformal mapping. Self-effacingly, Ahlfors credited Nevanlinna and another teacher, George Polya, for their "considerable help." They, in turn, insisted that he publish the results solely in his own name. Thereafter, as he expressed it, "I have tried to repay my debt by never accepting to appear as coauthor with a student." In 1933, he returned to Helsinki, where he met and married Erna Lehnert, an event he described as the "happiest and most important in my life." In 1935, he began a three-year stint teaching at Harvard. Homesick, he returned to Finland in 1938. There he spent most of the war years as professor at the University of Helsinki before being invited back to Zurich in 1944. Ahlfors returned to Harvard, as full professor, in 1946 and remained until his retirement in 1977. From 1964, he occupied the William Caspar Graustein chair. Ahlfors won several honorary doctorates, including one from the University of London and one from Harvard. As is typical in mathematics, Ahlfors achieved renown from work done while in his twenties. Less typically, he continued for decades to produce highly influential work, notably his proof of the "Ahlfors finiteness theorem," published in 1964. Ahlfors is survived by his wife, Erna, who lives in Nassau, N.Y.; three daughters, Cynthia Edwards of Jumeauville, France, Vanessa Gruen of Darien, Conn., and Old Chatham, N.Y., and Caroline Mouris of Nassau, N.Y.; a brother, Axel Ahlfors of Torup, Sweden; a sister, Unga Appelqvist of Helsinki; grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Source: Harvard Gazette.
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