Theodore Samuel Motzkin was a German-born American mathematician best known for his work on linear programming.
Born in Russia into a Jewish family, Leo Motzkin went to Berlin when he was thirteen years old to study mathematics. * After starting work on his doctoral thesis, Leo Motzkin left mathematics to work for the Zionist movement. * Theodore Motzkin showed remarkable talents for mathematics as a child growing up in Berlin, and he began his university education when only fifteen years old. * For his doctoral work Motzkin went to Basel where he studied with Ostrowski writing his dissertation on linear inequalities. * Ostrowski was in many ways more of a collaborator of Motzkin's than a supervisor. * Motzkin already had several publications before his thesis on linear programming was completed in 1934. * Motzkin's first publication, however, was not on linear programming but rather on power series. * It was written as a partial solution to a problem which had been posed by Ostrowski and it gave Motzkin particular pleasure when he returned to the problem many years later and was able to give a complete solution. * Both linear programming and power series were themes which ran through Motzkin's research throughout his life but he was an extremely broad mathematician and there were many other themes. * In 1935 Motzkin was appointed to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. * As was characteristic of Motzkin throughout his life, he maintained a remarkable mathematical output, writing several papers in Hebrew and helping to create Hebrew mathematical terminology. * We spoke of many different themes running through Motzkin's research and one of these was combinatorial analysis. * Dvoretzky and Motzkin give a new proof of great simplicity and elegance. * Motzkin emigrated to the United States in 1948 and there he spent two years at Harvard and Boston College. * In many publications on this topic Motzkin examined a wide variety of different ideas, including new measure of closeness of approximation. * Other themes which run through Motzkin's work is geometric problems, some involving Ramsey theory, and he wrote many papers on graph theory. * Some of Motzkin's most beautiful and important work made its first appearance here.
Born in Russia into a Jewish family, Leo Motzkin went to Berlin when he was thirteen years old to study mathematics. * After starting work on his doctoral thesis, Leo Motzkin left mathematics to work for the Zionist movement. * Theodore Motzkin showed remarkable talents for mathematics as a child growing up in Berlin, and he began his university education when only fifteen years old. * For his doctoral work Motzkin went to Basel where he studied with Ostrowski writing his dissertation on linear inequalities. * Ostrowski was in many ways more of a collaborator of Motzkin's than a supervisor. * Motzkin already had several publications before his thesis on linear programming was completed in 1934. * Motzkin's first publication, however, was not on linear programming but rather on power series. * It was written as a partial solution to a problem which had been posed by Ostrowski and it gave Motzkin particular pleasure when he returned to the problem many years later and was able to give a complete solution. * Both linear programming and power series were themes which ran through Motzkin's research throughout his life but he was an extremely broad mathematician and there were many other themes. * In 1935 Motzkin was appointed to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. * As was characteristic of Motzkin throughout his life, he maintained a remarkable mathematical output, writing several papers in Hebrew and helping to create Hebrew mathematical terminology. * We spoke of many different themes running through Motzkin's research and one of these was combinatorial analysis. * Dvoretzky and Motzkin give a new proof of great simplicity and elegance. * Motzkin emigrated to the United States in 1948 and there he spent two years at Harvard and Boston College. * In many publications on this topic Motzkin examined a wide variety of different ideas, including new measure of closeness of approximation. * Other themes which run through Motzkin's work is geometric problems, some involving Ramsey theory, and he wrote many papers on graph theory. * Some of Motzkin's most beautiful and important work made its first appearance here.
Born 26 March 1908, Berlin, Germany. Died 15 December 1970, Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Origin Germany
