Person: Faber, Georg

Georg Faber was a German mathematician whose most important work was on the polynomial expansion of functions.

Faber's most important work was on the polynomial expansion of functions.
These polynomials are now known as 'Faber polynomials' and first appear in Faber's 1903 paper Über polynomische Entwickelungen Ⓣ(On polynomial developments) published in Mathematische Annalen.
Faber was building on the idea of Archimedes who computed approximately using a hierarchy of polygonal approximations of a circle.
Only in the 1980s was Faber's idea seen to be an important ingredient for the efficient solution of partial differential equations.
Most of Faber's publications are in function theory.
One further achievement of Faber is worthy of mention.
Two mathematicians independently verified Rayleigh's conjecture, Faber and Edgar Krahn.
Faber was also interested in mathematical education and he worked with his colleague von Dyck at Munich on the mathematical education of engineers, physicists and mathematicians.
In addition to his research areas, Faber lectured on complex analysis, probability theory, the theory of relativity and analytical mechanics.
Faber had many interests outside mathematics.

Born 5 April 1877, Kaiserslautern, Germany. Died 7 March 1966, Munich, Germany.

View full biography at MacTutor

Origin Germany

Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0!

O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive