Person: Nikodym, Otton Marcin

Otton Nikodym was a Polish mathematician who worked in America and is known for his work on integration theory.

On 2 April 1919, the Polish Mathematical Society was founded by sixteen mathematicians - among them Otton Nikodym.
In 1924, under strong pressure from Sierpiński, Nikodym agreed to take his doctoral examination at Warsaw University.
During this period Nikodym published 32 papers and four textbooks.
Nikodym's name is mostly known in measure theory (e.
the Radon-Nikodym theorem and derivative, the Nikodym convergence theorem, the Nikodym-Grothendieck boundedness theorem), in functional analysis (the Radon-Nikodym property of a Banach space, the Frechet-Nikodym metric space, a Nikodym set), projections onto convex sets with applications to Dirichlet problem, generalized solutions of differential equations, descriptive set theory and the foundations of quantum mechanics.
This paradoxical set in the plane, which for certain problems plays a role similar to Besicovitch sets is called a Nikodym set.
In 1945 Nikodym became a professor at the Technical University of Cracow and in academic year 1945/46 taught mathematics.
After he retired, the Nikodyms moved in 1966 to Utica, New York, where he continued his research, sponsored in part by the Atomic Energy Comission and National Science Foundation.
Nikodym wrote three volumes of Didactics of pure mathematics in high school but published only the two first volumes in 1930 and 1938.
Nikodym liked good literature and fairy-tales but mostly music.

Born 13 August 1887, Zablotow, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine). Died 4 May 1974, Utica, USA.

View full biography at MacTutor

Origin Ukraine

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

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