Person: Carathéodory, Constantin
Carathéodory made significant contributions to the calculus of variations, the theory of point set measure, and the theory of functions of a real variable.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Constantin was already bilingual in French and Greek by this time.
- Constantin began his formal schooling at a private school in Vanderstock in 1881.
- Twice during his time at this school Constantin won a prize as the best mathematics student in Belgium.
- At this stage Carathéodory began training as a military engineer.
- Carathéodory entered the University of Berlin in May 1900 where Frobenius and Schwarz were professors.
- Study, at Bonn, had proposed Carathéodory as Furtwängler's successor and, after serious thought as to whether he should leave Göttingen, Carathéodory went to Bonn where he became a Provatdozent on 1 April 1908.
- After a year at Bonn, Carathéodory was appointed as Professor of higher Mathematics at the Technical University of Hanover, so becoming Stäckel's successor.
- The famine of 1917 hit hard but Carathéodory continued to give lecture courses at the university.
- Carathéodory had also accepted editorial positions on the boards of two major mathematics journals, the Rendiconti del Circolo Matematico di Palermo from 1909 and the Mathematische Annalen from 1914.
- The Greek government had asked Carathéodory to establish a second university in Smyrna.
- On 14 July the Greek government published a bill setting up a Greek University in Smyrna and soon others were appointed at assist Carathéodory.
- On 28 July Carathéodory was officially appointed as organiser of the Ionian University in Smyrna and also Professor of Mathematics at the new university.
- Carathéodory was able to save the university library, which he had worked so hard to establish, and most of the equipment which he had been purchased for the science departments, and escaped to Athens on a Greek battleship.
- In 1928 Carathéodory became the first visiting lecturer of the American Mathematical Society.
- Carathéodory continued to hold his position in Munich until he retired in August 1938.
- Carathéodory made significant contributions to the calculus of variations, the theory of point set measure, and the theory of functions of a real variable.
- Carathéodory wrote many fine books including Lectures on Real Functions (1918), Conformal representation (1932), Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equations (1935), Geometric Optics (1937), Real functions Vol.
- Carathéodory did write the second volume of this work but it was destroyed while at the publisher Teubner during the bombing of Leipzig in 1943.
Born 13 September 1873, Berlin, Germany. Died 2 February 1950, Munich, Germany.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Germany
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
-
- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
