February 09, 2011 <Back to Index>
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Lipót Fejér (or Leopold Fejér) (February 9, 1880, Pécs – October 15, 1959, Budapest) was a Hungarian mathematician. Fejér was born Leopold Weiss, and changed to the Hungarian name Fejér around 1900. Fejér studied mathematics and physics in Budapest and Berlin, where he was taught by Hermann Schwarz. From 1902 to 1905 Fejér taught at the University of Pázmány Péter and from 1905 until 1911 he taught at Kolozsvár in Hungary (now Cluj-Napoca in Romania). In 1911 Fejér was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the University of Budapest and he held that post until his death. He was elected corresponding member (1908), member (1930) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. During his period in the chair at Budapest Fejér led a highly successful Hungarian school of analysis. He was the thesis advisor of mathematicians such as John von Neumann, Paul Erdős, George Pólya and Pál Turán. Lipót Fejér is buried in Kerepesi Cemetery in Budapest. Fejér's research concentrated on harmonic analysis and, in particular, Fourier series. Fejér collaborated to produce important papers, one with Carathéodory on entire functions in 1907 and another major work with Frigyes Riesz in 1922 on conformal mappings (specifically, a short proof of the Riemann mapping theorem). Pólya writes the following about Fejér, telling us much about his personality: He
had artistic tastes. He deeply loved music and was a good pianist. He
liked a well-turned phrase. 'As to earning a living', he said, 'a
professor's salary is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition.' Once
he was very angry with a colleague who happened to be a topologist, and explaining the case at length he wound up by declaring '... and what he is saying is a topological mapping of the truth'. In the same article Pólya writes about Fejér's style of mathematics: Fejér
talked about a paper he was about to write up. 'When I write a paper,'
he said, 'I have to rederive for myself the rules of differentiation
and sometimes even the commutative law of multiplication.' These words
stuck in my memory and years later I came to think that they expressed
an essential aspect of Fejér's mathematical talent; his love for
the intuitively clear detail. |