Stefan Bergman
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Stefan Bergman was a Polish-born mathematician whose primary work was in complex analysis.
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[edit] Life
Bergman was born 5 May, 1895, in Czestochowa, Poland, and died in June, 1977 in Palo Alto, California, USA. He received his Dr. phil. degree at Berlin University in 1921 for a dissertation on Fourier analysis. His advisor, Richard von Mises, was a strong influence on him at this time, and remained so for the rest of his career.[1] In 1933, Bergman was forced to leave his post at the Berlin university due to being Jewish. He fled first to Russia, where he stayed until 1939, and then to Paris, where he remained until 1939. In 1939, he emigrated to the United States of America, where he would remain for the rest of life.[1]
[edit] Work
In the United States, Bergman held professorships at various universities, but he was interested purely in research and insisted that he not have teaching responsibilities.[1] He is best known for the kernel function he discovered while at Berlin University in 1922. This function is known today as the Bergman Kernel. Bergman taught for many years at Stanford University, and served as an advisor to several students.[2]
[edit] Stefan Bergman Prize
There is a Stefan Bergman prize in mathematics, which awards prizes once every year or two. The prize was initiated by Bergman's wife in her will, in memory of her husband's work. The American Mathematical Society supports the prize and selects the committee of judges [3]. The prize is awarded for[3]:
- the theory of the kernel function and its applications in real and complex analysis; or
- function-theoretic methods in the theory of partial differential equations of elliptic type with attention to Bergman's operator method.
