Stieltjes

Thomas Jan Stieltjes

Born: 29 Dec 1856 in Zwolle, Netherlands
Died: 31 Dec 1894 in Toulouse, France

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Stieltjes was educated at Delft but spent his student years reading Gauss and Jacobi rather than attending lectures and failed his examinations. He became assistant at Leiden Observatory and began a correspondence with Hermite which lasted the rest of his life.

Although placed first for a chair at Groningen he was not appointed because of his lack of qualifications. He went with his family to Paris in 1885 and was appointed to a chair in Toulouse in 1889.

Stieltjes worked on analysis, continued fractions and number theory. He is often called the father of the analytic theory of continued fractions . However, he is best remembered for the Stieltjes integral. In a 2 volume memoir Recherches sur les fractions continues , a beautifully written work of major importance, he introduces his integral. Volume 2 only appeared after his death.

Stieltjes also contributed to ordinary and partial differential equations, the gamma function, interpolation and elliptic functions. His work is an important first step towards Hilbert spaces. His work on divergent series is also important.

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. Thomas Jan Stieltjes, Annales de la Faculté des sciences de l'Université de Toulouse pour les sciences mathématique et physiques 1 (1895), 1-64.
  4. C Hermite, Correspondance d'Hermite et de Stieltjes (Paris, 1905). 
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JOC/EFR February 1996