Person: Dinghas, Alexander

Alexander Dinghas was a Greek mathematician who worked in function theory.

Alexander attended primary school in Smyrna and began his secondary schooling there.
In 1931 Dinghas began his studies at Berlin.
However, many other talented mathematicians and theoretical physicists were also at Berlin and influenced Dinghas.
It was the teaching of Schmidt in particular which convinced Dinghas that mathematics rather than physics was the subject for him to pursue.
Right from the time he began his studies in 1931, Dinghas became interested in Nevanlinna theory.
He attended lectures on the topic given by Schmidt and it was these lectures which Schmidt gave "with almost religious enthusiasm" which turned Dinghas from an engineer/physicist into a mathematician.
Dinghas produced a series of papers on isoperimetric problems in spaces of constant curvature.
His work here was much influenced by Schmidt who also produced important results which Dinghas used in his work.
Although Dinghas had a wonderful feel for mathematics, he frequently waved his hands somewhat when he gave a proof.
Dinghas felt the man's hunger and got the waiter to send him food and drink which Dinghas paid for.
Dinghas received many honours for his work.

Born 9 February 1908, Smyrna (now Izmir), Turkey. Died 19 April 1974, Berlin, Germany.

View full biography at MacTutor

Origin Turkey

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

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