Person: Furstenberg, Hillel
Hillel Furstenberg is a German-born American mathematician working in combinatorics, probability theory, ergodic theory and topological dynamics.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- In 1955 Furstenberg graduated from Yeshiva College having been awarded both a B.A. and an M.Sc. He had already published a number of papers with Note on one type of indeterminate form (1953) and On the infinitude of primes (1955) both appearing in the American Mathematical Monthly.
- Furstenberg went to Princeton University to study for his doctorate, supervised by Salomon Bochner.
- At this time Bochner was interested in probability, having published his classic text Harmonic Analysis and the Theory of Probability in 1955, the year in which Furstenberg began research.
- After submitting his thesis Prediction Theory in 1958, Furstenberg was awarded his doctorate.
- After a year 1958-59 as an Instructor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Furstenberg worked at the Mathematics Department in the College of Science, Letters, and Arts of the University of Minnesota.
- In 1963 the two University of Minnesota Departments of Mathematics were merged into the School of Mathematics in the Institute of Technology and in the following year Furstenberg was appointed a full professor.
- Furstenberg remained at the Hebrew University until he retired in 2003.
- Many important results due to Furstenberg are presented in his classic monograph Recurrence in ergodic theory and combinatorial number theory (1981).
- The Israel Prize, an award made by the State of Israel that is regarded as the state's highest honour, was presented to Furstenberg in 1993.
- Professor Furstenberg has taught and guided many students studying towards advanced degrees in his field of research and in other, wider fields - thus ushering a new generation of mathematicians who today serve as professors at institutions of higher learning in Israel and abroad.
- In topological dynamics, Furstenberg's proof of the structure theorem for minimal distal flows, introduced radically new techniques and revolutionized the field.
- In his study of stochastic processes on homogenous spaces, he introduced stationary methods whose study led him to define what is now called the Furstenberg Boundary of a group.
- In ergodic theory, Furstenberg developed the fundamental concept of dynamical embedding.
- In addition to these honours, Furstenberg has been elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences and the United States National Academy of Sciences.
- In 2003, on the occasion of Furstenberg's retirement, the Israel Science Foundation organised a research workshop Conference on Probability in Mathematics in his honour.
- Finally we note that Furstenberg was a plenary speaker at the British Mathematical Colloquium at Bristol in 1984 when he gave the lecture Ergodic theory and Diophantine problems.
Born 29 September 1935, Berlin, Germany.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Prize Abel, Origin Germany, Topology, Prize Wolf
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
