Mathias Lerch (''Matyáš Lerch'', ) (20 February 1860,

Milínov Milínov is a municipality and village in Plzeň-South District in the Plzeň Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 200 inhabitants. Milínov lies approximately south-east of Plzeň and south-west of Prague. References

Villages ...

– 3 August 1922, Sušice) was a Czech

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 published about 250 papers, largely on

mathematical analysis Analysis is the branch of mathematics dealing with continuous functions, limit (mathematics), limits, and related theories, such as Derivative, differentiation, Integral, integration, measure (mathematics), measure, infinite sequences, series (m ...

and

number theory Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) said, "Math ...

. He studied in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

and

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

, and held teaching positions at the Czech Technical Institute in Prague, the

University of Fribourg The University of Fribourg (french: Université de Fribourg; german: Universität Freiburg) is a public university located in Fribourg, Switzerland. The roots of the university can be traced back to 1580, when the notable Jesuit Peter Canisi ...

in Switzerland, the Czech Technical Institute in Brno, and

Masaryk University Masaryk University (MU) ( cs, Masarykova univerzita; la, Universitas Masarykiana Brunensis) is the second largest university in the Czech Republic, a member of the Compostela Group and the Utrecht Network. Founded in 1919 in Brno as the sec ...

in Brno; he was the first mathematics professor at Masaryk University when it was founded in 1920. In 1900, he was awarded the Grand Prize of the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at th ...

for his number-theoretic work. The

Lerch zeta function In mathematics, the Lerch zeta function, sometimes called the Hurwitz–Lerch zeta function, is a special function that generalizes the Hurwitz zeta function and the polylogarithm. It is named after Czech mathematician Mathias Lerch, who publis ...

is named after him, as is the

Appell–Lerch sum In mathematics, a mock modular form is the holomorphic part of a harmonic weak Maass form, and a mock theta function is essentially a mock modular form of weight . The first examples of mock theta functions were described by Srinivasa Ramanujan ...

. His doctoral students include

Michel Plancherel Michel Plancherel (16 January 1885, Bussy, Fribourg4 March 1967, Zurich) was a Swiss mathematician. He was born in Bussy (Fribourg, Switzerland) and obtained his Diplom in mathematics from the University of Fribourg and then his doctoral degree ...

and Otakar Borůvka.

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* 1860 births 1922 deaths Czech mathematicians Masaryk University faculty University of Fribourg faculty {{europe-mathematician-stub