Georg Alexander Pick (10 August 1859 – 26 July 1942) was an
Austrian Jewish 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 ...
who was murdered during
The Holocaust
The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
. He was born in
Vienna
Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
to Josefa Schleisinger and Adolf Josef Pick and died at
Theresienstadt concentration camp
Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination c ...
.
Today he is best known for
Pick's theorem
In geometry, Pick's theorem provides a formula for the area of a simple polygon with integer vertex coordinates, in terms of the number of integer points within it and on its boundary. The result was first described by Georg Alexander Pick in 1 ...
for determining the area of lattice polygons. He published it in an article in 1899; it was popularized when
Hugo Dyonizy Steinhaus included it in the 1969 edition of
Mathematical Snapshots.
Education and career
Pick studied at the
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (, ) is a public university, public research university in Vienna, Austria. Founded by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, Duke Rudolph IV in 1365, it is the oldest university in the German-speaking world and among the largest ...
and defended his Ph.D. in 1880 under
Leo Königsberger and
Emil Weyr. After receiving his doctorate he was appointed an assistant to
Ernst Mach
Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach ( ; ; 18 February 1838 – 19 February 1916) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher, who contributed to the understanding of the physics of shock waves. The ratio of the speed of a flow or object to that of ...
at the
Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. He became a lecturer there in 1881. He took a leave from the university in 1884 during which he worked with
Felix Klein
Felix Christian Klein (; ; 25 April 1849 – 22 June 1925) was a German mathematician and Mathematics education, mathematics educator, known for his work in group theory, complex analysis, non-Euclidean geometry, and the associations betwe ...
at the
University of Leipzig
Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...
. Other than that year, he remained in Prague until his retirement in 1927 at which time he returned to Vienna.
Pick headed the committee at the (then)
German university of Prague, which appointed
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...
to a chair of
mathematical physics
Mathematical physics is the development of mathematics, mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the de ...
in 1911. Pick introduced Einstein to the work of Italian mathematicians
Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro
Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro (; 12January 1925) was an Italian mathematician. He is most famous as the discoverer of tensor calculus.
With his former student Tullio Levi-Civita, he wrote his most famous single publication, a pioneering work on the ...
and
Tullio Levi-Civita
Tullio Levi-Civita, (; ; 29 March 1873 – 29 December 1941) was an Italian mathematician, most famous for his work on absolute differential calculus ( tensor calculus) and its applications to the theory of relativity, but who also made signifi ...
in the field of
absolute differential calculus
Absolute may refer to:
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, which later in 1915 helped Einstein to successfully formulate
general relativity
General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity, and as Einstein's theory of gravity, is the differential geometry, geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of grav ...
.
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 ...
was one of his students in
Prague
Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...
. He also directed the doctoral theses of
Josef Grünwald,
Walter Fröhlich, and
Saly Struik. Pick was elected a member of the , but was expelled after
Nazis took over Prague.
After retiring in 1927, Pick returned to Vienna, the city where he was born. After the
Anschluss
The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938.
The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "German Question, Greater Germany") arose after t ...
when the Nazis marched into Austria on 12 March 1938, Pick returned to Prague. In March 1939 the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia. Pick was sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp on 13 July 1942. He died there two weeks later.
See also
*
Nevanlinna–Pick interpolation In complex analysis, given ''initial data'' consisting of n points \lambda_1, \ldots, \lambda_n in the complex unit disk \mathbb and ''target data'' consisting of n points z_1, \ldots, z_n in \mathbb, the Nevanlinna–Pick interpolation problem is ...
*
Pick matrix
*
Pick's theorem
In geometry, Pick's theorem provides a formula for the area of a simple polygon with integer vertex coordinates, in terms of the number of integer points within it and on its boundary. The result was first described by Georg Alexander Pick in 1 ...
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pick, Georg Alexander
Austrian mathematicians
1859 births
1942 deaths
Austrian people who died in the Theresienstadt Ghetto
Scientists from Vienna
Mathematicians from Austria-Hungary
University of Vienna alumni
Austrian Jews who died in the Holocaust
Austrian lecturers