Szego

Gabor Szegö


Born: 20 Jan 20 1895 in Kunhegyes, Hungary
Died: 7 Aug 1985 in Palo Alto, California USA

Previous (Chronologically) Next     Biographies Index

Previous ( Alphabetically) Next          Welcome page

After attending university in Budapest, Szegö went to Berlin where he studied under, among others, Frobenius, Schwartz, Knopp and Schottky, and Göttingen where he studied with Hilbert, Landau and Haar. He returned to Hungary where he worked under Féjer and Kurschak. He acted as a coach to the young von Neumann.

He enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian cavalry in the First World War and spent some time in the Air force where he met von Mises.

In 1921 he moved to Berlin where he became a friend of Schur and worked with von Mises and Schmidt. He cooperated with Pólya in bringing out a joint Problem Book: Aufgaben und Lehrsätze aus der Analysis , vols I and II (Problems and Theorems in Analysis ) (1925) which has since gone through many editions and which has had an enormous impact on later generations of mathematicians.

In 1926 he moved to Königsberg to succeed Knopp as professor. He stayed there until 1934 when the pressure on him as a Jew forced him to move to the USA where he found a post at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. In 1938 he moved to Stanford where he remained for the rest of his working life.

Szegö's most important work was in the area of Orthogonal Polynomials and Toeplitz matrices. He produced over 130 research articles as well as several influential books.

References:

  1. R Askey and P Nevai, Gabor Szegö: 1895-1985, Mathematical Intelligencer , to appear.

Previous (Chronologically) Next     Biographies Index

Previous ( Alphabetically) Next          Welcome page

History Topics Index              Famous curves index

Chronologies                           Birthplace Map

Mathematicians of the day  Anniversaries for the year

Search Form   Simple Search Form   Search Suggestions

JOC/EFR February 1996