John Michael Horvath (born János Horváth; 30 July 1924 in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

– 12 March 2015) was a Hungarian-American mathematician noted for his contributions to

analysis Analysis ( : analyses) is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (3 ...

especially in

functional analysis Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of vector spaces endowed with some kind of limit-related structure (e.g. inner product, norm, topology, etc.) and the linear functions defined ...

and distribution theory.Horvath János
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 24 March 2015

Education and career

Horvath received his doctorate in 1947 from the

University of Budapest A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...

as a student of

Lipót Fejér Lipót Fejér (or Leopold Fejér, ; 9 February 1880 – 15 October 1959) was a Hungarian mathematician of Jewish heritage. Fejér was born Leopold Weisz, and changed to the Hungarian name Fejér around 1900. Biography Fejér studied mathematic ...

and

Frigyes Riesz Frigyes Riesz ( hu, Riesz Frigyes, , sometimes spelled as Frederic; 22 January 1880 – 28 February 1956) was a HungarianEberhard Zeidler: Nonlinear Functional Analysis and Its Applications: Linear monotone operators. Springer, 199/ref> mathema ...

. Four other talented mathematicians also graduated in the class of 1947: János Aczél, Ákos Császár, László Fuchs and

István Gál István () is a Hungarian language equivalent of the name Stephen or Stefan (given name), Stefan. It may refer to: People with the given name Nobles, palatines and judges royal * Stephen I of Hungary (c. 975–1038), last grand prince of the Hun ...

. Together with Horvath, they were referred to as the Big Five. After obtaining his doctorate, he went to the

French National Centre for Scientific Research The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,63 ...

(CNRS) to do research, then to the University of Los Andes in Bogota, and finally, from 1957 to 1994 he taught in the United States at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the Flagship un ...

and was then awarded the title of Professor Emeritus.John Horvath: obituary
University of Maryland: Department of Mathematics

MathSciNet MathSciNet is a searchable online bibliographic database created by the American Mathematical Society in 1996. It contains all of the contents of the journal '' Mathematical Reviews'' (MR) since 1940 along with an extensive author database, links ...

called his book ''Topological Vector Spaces and Distributions'', "The most readable introduction to the theory of vector spaces available in English and possibly any other language."
Topological Vector Spaces and Distributions
' By: John Horvath, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1966, His work on analytic continuations and a general definition of the

Convolution In mathematics (in particular, functional analysis), convolution is a mathematical operation on two functions ( and ) that produces a third function (f*g) that expresses how the shape of one is modified by the other. The term ''convolution' ...

of distributions was essential to

Laurent Schwartz Laurent-Moïse Schwartz (; 5 March 1915 – 4 July 2002) was a French mathematician. He pioneered the theory of distributions, which gives a well-defined meaning to objects such as the Dirac delta function. He was awarded the Fields Medal in ...

who went on to develop a full theory of distributions in the late 1940s.On some contributions of John Horvath to the theory of distributions
Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications Vol 297, Issue 2, 15 September 2004, Pages 353-383 In 2006 he edited and wrote one of the chapters for ''A Panorama of Hungarian Mathematics in the Twentieth Century''. He was a member of the

Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( hu, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, MTA) is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. Its mai ...

Works

* (2005)
A Panorama of Hungarian Mathematics in the Twentieth Century
' Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. * (1966)

' Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Horvath, John 1924 births 2015 deaths 20th-century Hungarian mathematicians Mathematical analysts Budapest University alumni Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences University System of Maryland faculty University of Los Andes (Colombia) alumni Expatriate academics in the United States Hungarian expatriates in the United States