Menahem Max Schiffer (24 September 1911, Berlin – 11 November 1997)) was a German-born American mathematician who worked in complex analysis, partial differential equations, and mathematical physics.

Biography

Menachem Max Schiffer studied physics from 1930 at the

University of Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

and then at the

Humboldt University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...

with

Max von Laue Max Theodor Felix von Laue (; 9 October 1879 – 24 April 1960) was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 "for his discovery of the X-ray diffraction, diffraction of X-rays by crystals". In addition to his scientifi ...

Erwin Schrödinger Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger ( ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was an Austrian-Irish theoretical physicist who developed fundamental results in quantum field theory, quantum theory. In particul ...

, Walter Nernst,

Erhard Schmidt Erhard Schmidt (13 January 1876 – 6 December 1959) was a Baltic German mathematician whose work significantly influenced the direction of mathematics in the twentieth century. Schmidt was born in Tartu (), in the Governorate of Livonia (now ...

Issai Schur Issai Schur (10 January 1875 – 10 January 1941) was a Russian mathematician who worked in Germany for most of his life. He studied at the Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Berlin. He obtained his doctorate in 1901, became lecturer i ...

and

Ludwig Bieberbach Ludwig Georg Elias Moses Bieberbach (; 4 December 1886 – 1 September 1982) was a German mathematician and leading representative of National Socialist German mathematics (" Deutsche Mathematik"). Biography Born in Goddelau, near Darmstadt, ...

. In Berlin he worked closely with Issai Schur. In 1934, after being forced by the Nazis to leave the academic world, he immigrated to

Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After ...

. On the basis of his prior mathematical publications, Schiffer received a master's degree from the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

. In 1938, he received his doctorate under the supervision of

Michael Fekete Michael (Mihály) Fekete (; 19 July 1886 – 13 May 1957) was a Hungarian-Israelis, Israeli mathematician. Biography Michael Fekete was born in Zenta, Austria-Hungary (today Senta, Serbia). He received his PhD in 1909 from the University ...

. In his dissertation on ''Conformal representation and univalent functions'' he introduced the "Schiffer variation", a method for handling geometric problems in complex analysis. Schiffer married Fanya Rabinivics Schiffer in 1937. His daughter Dinah S. Singer, is an experimental immunologist.

Academic career

In September 1952, he began to teach at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, along with

George Pólya George Pólya (; ; December 13, 1887 – September 7, 1985) was a Hungarian-American mathematician. He was a professor of mathematics from 1914 to 1940 at ETH Zürich and from 1940 to 1953 at Stanford University. He made fundamental contributi ...

Charles Loewner Charles Loewner (29 May 1893 – 8 January 1968) was an American mathematician. His name was Karel Löwner in Czech and Karl Löwner in German. Early life and career Karl Loewner was born into a Jewish family in Lany, about 30 km from Prag ...

Stefan Bergman Stefan Bergman (5 May 1895 – 6 June 1977) was a Russian Poland, Poland-born American mathematician whose primary work was in complex analysis. He is known for the positive-definite kernel, kernel function he discovered in 1922 at Humboldt Univer ...

, and

Gábor Szegő Gábor Szegő () (January 20, 1895 – August 7, 1985) was a Hungarian-American mathematician. He was one of the foremost mathematical analysts of his generation and made fundamental contributions to the theory of orthogonal polynomials and ...

. With Paul Garabedian, Schiffer worked on the

Bieberbach conjecture In complex analysis, de Branges's theorem, or the Bieberbach conjecture, is a theorem that gives a necessary condition on a holomorphic function in order for it to map the open unit disk of the complex plane injectively to the complex plane. It was ...

with a proof in 1955 of the special case n=4. He was a speaker at the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...

(ICM) in 1950 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was a plenary speaker at the ICM in 1958 at Edinburgh with plenary address ''Extremum Problems and Variational Methods in Conformal Mapping''. In 1970 he was elected to the

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

. He retired from Stanford University as professor emeritus in 1977. In 1981, Schiffer became a founding member of the

World Cultural Council The World Cultural Council is an international organization whose goals are to promote cultural values, goodwill and philanthropy among individuals. The organization founded in 1982 and based in Mexico, has held a yearly award ceremony since 198 ...

Selected publications

*with Leon Bowden
The role of mathematics in science
Mathematical Association of America 1984 *with

: Kernel functions and elliptic differential equations in mathematical physics, Academic Press 1953 *with Donald Spencer: Functionals of finite Riemann Surfaces, Princeton 1954 *with Ronald Adler, Maurice Bazin: Introduction to General Relativity, McGraw Hill 1965 xvi+ 451 pp. Illus.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Schiffer, Menahem Max 1911 births 1997 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians Founding members of the World Cultural Council Mathematical analysts Jewish German scientists Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni Stanford University Department of Mathematics faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Emigrants from Nazi Germany Immigrants to the United States Humboldt University of Berlin alumni