Eberhard Hopf | |
---|---|
Born |
Salzburg, Austria-Hungary |
17 April 1902
Died | 24 July 1983 Bloomington, Indiana, United States |
(aged 81)
Residence | Germany, United States |
Nationality | German |
Fields | Mathematician |
Institutions |
MIT (1931-36) University of Leipzig (1936-42) University of Munich (1944-47) Indiana Univ. Bloomington (1949-83) |
Alma mater | University of Berlin |
Doctoral advisor |
Erhard Schmidt Issai Schur |
Doctoral students | Albert Schaeffer |
Known for |
Ergodic theory Partial differential equation Differential geometry |
Eberhard Frederich Ferdinand Hopf (April 17, 1902, Salzburg, Austria-Hungary – July 24, 1983, Bloomington, Indiana) was a mathematician and astronomer, one of the founding fathers of ergodic theory and a pioneer of bifurcation theory who also made significant contributions to the subjects of partial differential equations and integral equations, fluid dynamics, and differential geometry. The Hopf maximum principle is an early result of his (1927) that is one of the most important techniques in the theory of elliptic partial differential equations.
Eberhard Hopf was born in Salzburg, Austria-Hungary, but his scientific career was divided between Germany and the United States. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1926 and his Habilitation in Mathematical Astronomy from the University of Berlin in 1929.
In 1930 he received a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation to study classical mechanics with George Birkhoff at Harvard, but his appointment was at the Harvard College Observatory. In late 1931, with the help of Norbert Wiener, Hopf joined the Department of Mathematics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, accepting the position of Assistant Professor. While at MIT, Hopf did much of his work on ergodic theory.