Eberhard Frederich Ferdinand Hopf (April 4, 1902 in Salzburg, Austria-Hungary – July 24, 1983 in Bloomington, Indiana, USA) was a German 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 | |
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Born | |
Died | 24 July 1983 Bloomington, Indiana, United States | (aged 81)
Nationality | German |
Alma mater | University of Berlin |
Known for | Bifurcation theory Differential geometry Ergodic theory Partial differential equation Hopf bifurcation Hopf decomposition Hopf lemma Hopf maximum principle Cole–Hopf transformation Landau–Hopf theory of turbulence Wiener–Hopf method |
Awards | Leroy P. Steele Prize (1981) Gibbs Lecture (1971) ICM speaker (1950) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematician |
Institutions | MIT (1931-36) University of Leipzig (1936-42) University of Munich (1944-47) Indiana Univ. Bloomington (1949-83) |
Doctoral advisor | Erhard Schmidt Issai Schur |
Doctoral students | Albert Schaeffer |
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 1971, Hopf was the American Mathematical Society Gibbs Lecturer.[1] In 1981, he received the Leroy P. Steele Prize from the American Mathematical Society for seminal contributions to research.
A non-comprehensive selection of his work was published in 2002: