Person: Dávid, Lajos
Lajos Dávid was a Hungarian mathematician known for his work on the arithmetic/geometric mean and as a historian of mathematics, particularly on Bolyai.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Lajos Dávid himself was educated at Kolozsvár, attending first the elementary school of the Reformed College.
- He attended mathematics courses by Gyula Farkas, Lajos Schlesinger and later took a course by Frigyes Riesz who was only one year older than Dávid.
- He undertook research at the university for his doctorate advised by Lajos Schlesinger and submitted his thesis The Gauss-type medium arithmetico-geometricum in 1903.
- Between 1905 and 1906 Dávid studied in Göttingen, attending courses by David Hilbert and Felix Klein, and then in Paris.
- In 1911 Lajos Schlesinger left Kolozsvár when he was appointed as a Professor at the University of Giessen in Germany.
- Schlesinger invited Dávid to take part in writing commentaries on the works of Gauss for the Mathematics Seminars in Göttingen and Giessen.
- Today Dávid he is best known for his work as a devoted Bolyai researcher.
- As early as 1924, Lajos Dávid pointed out that the work of János Bolyai contained the seeds of the theory of relativity.
- Besides, the writing of Lajos Dávid is an important source-book because of the accuracy of its data.
- Dávid was a dedicated professional in teacher training.
- Many of the topics concerned related to Dávid's projects, to the research of the Bolyais and to the Gauss-type 'medium arithmetico-geometricum'.
- There were only a few to assist him at the Mathematics Seminar, so Lajos Dávid himself held lectures on a very wide variety of topics: descriptive geometry, infinite series, infinitesimal calculus and geometry, analysis, the practical solution of equations, the theory of differential equations, surface theory, probability theory, and practical mathematics.
Born 28 May 1881, Kolozsvár, Hungary (now Cluj-Napoca, Romania). Died 9 January 1962, Leányfalu, near Budapest, Hungary.
View full biography at MacTutor
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Origin Romania
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References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
