Richard Courant

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Richard Courant.

Richard Courant (born January 8, 1888 in Lublinitz, Silesia, Germany, today Poland, died January 27, 1972 in New York/USA) was a German and American mathematician.

During his youth, his parents had to move quite often, to Glatz, Breslau, and in 1905 to Berlin. He stayed in Breslau and entered the university there. As he found the courses not demanding enough, he continued his studies in Zürich and Göttingen. He eventually became David Hilbert's assistant in Göttingen and obtained his doctorate there in 1910. He had to fight in World War I, but he was wounded and dismissed from the military service shortly after enlisting. He continued his research in Göttingen, with a two-year period as professor in Münster. There he founded the Mathematical Institute, which he headed as director from 1928 until 1933.

Courant left Germany in 1933, earlier than many of his colleagues. While he was classified as a Jew by the Nazis, his having served as a front-line soldier exempted him from losing his position for this particular reason at the time; however, his public membership in the social-democratic left was a reason for dismissal to which no such exemption applied [1]. After one year in Cambridge, he went to New York where he became a professor at New York University in 1936. He was given the task of founding an institute for graduate studies in mathematics, a task which he carried out very successfully. The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (as it was renamed in 1964) continues to be one of the most respected research centers in applied mathematics.

Apart from his outstanding organizational talent, Courant is well remembered for his mathematical achievements. He authored the very influential textbook Methods of Mathematical Physics, which is still widely used more than eighty years after it was written. He is the co-author with Herbert Robbins of a popularization titled What is Mathematics?, which is still in print. His name is also attached to the finite element method, originally invented by engineers. Courant gave this a solid mathematical basis. This method is now the most important way to solve partial differential equations numerically.