David Vernon Widder (25 March 1898 – 8 July 1990) was an American

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

. He earned his Ph.D. at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1924 under

George Birkhoff George David Birkhoff (March21, 1884November12, 1944) was one of the top American mathematicians of his generation. He made valuable contributions to the theory of differential equations, dynamical systems, the four-color problem, the three-bo ...

and went on to join the faculty there. He was a co-founder of the ''

Duke Mathematical Journal ''Duke Mathematical Journal'' is a peer-reviewed mathematics journal published by Duke University Press. It was established in 1935. The founding editors-in-chief were David Widder, Arthur Coble, and Joseph Miller Thomas. The first issue inclu ...

'' and the author of the textbook ''Advanced Calculus'' (

Prentice-Hall Prentice Hall was a major American educational publisher. It published print and digital content for the 6–12 and higher-education market. It was an independent company throughout the bulk of the twentieth century. In its last few years it ...

, 1947). He wrote also '' The Laplace transform'' (in which he gave a first solution to Landau's problem on the Dirichlet eta function), (pbk reprint of 1941 1st edition) ''An introduction to transform theory'', and '' The convolution transform'' (co-author with I. I. Hirschman).

References

*''A Century of Mathematics in America'' by Peter L. Duren and

Richard Askey Richard Allen Askey (June 4, 1933 – October 9, 2019) was an American mathematician, known for his expertise in the area of special functions. The Askey–Wilson polynomials (introduced by him in 1984 together with James A. Wilson) are on the ...

, American Mathematical Society, 1988, . *''A History of the Second Fifty Years, American Mathematical Society 1939-1988'' By Everett Pitcher, American Mathematical Society, 1988, .

External links

* 1898 births 1990 deaths Harvard University alumni Harvard University Department of Mathematics faculty 20th-century American mathematicians People from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Mathematicians from Pennsylvania {{US-mathematician-stub