Ion Barbu

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Ion Barbu (pen name of Dan Barbilian; 18 March 1895, Rucăr, Argeş County–11 August 1961, Bucharest) was a distinguished Romanian mathematician and poet.

He was the son of Constantin Barbilian and Smaranda, née Şoiculescu. He attended Gheorghe Lazăr High School in Bucharest. During that time, he discovered his mathematics talents, and started publishing in Gazeta matematică; it was also then that he discovered his passion for poetry. Between 1914 and 1921 Barbu studied mathematics at the University of Bucharest, obtaining his Ph.D. in 1929.

Ion Barbu was known as "one of the greatest Romanian poets of the twentieth century and perhaps the greatest of all" according to Romanian literary critic Alexandru Ciorănescu. As a poet, he is best known for his volume Second Game (Romanian title Joc secund).

In 1942, Barbilian was named professor at the University of Bucharest (with some help from fellow mathematician Grigore Moisil^[1]). As a mathematician, Barbilian authored 80 research papers and studies. His most important contributions are two papers that appeared in Časopis Mathematiky a Fysiky. The so-called Barbilian spaces in geometry were named after him. His Erdős number is 5.

He is buried at Bellu cemetery.

[edit] References

^ O'Connor, John J; Edmund F. Robertson, "Grigore C. Moisil", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

Dan Barbilian, Teoria aritmetică a idealelor (în inele necomutative), Editura Academiei, Bucharest, Romania, 1956
Dan Barbilian, Grupuri cu operatori: Teoremele de descompunere ale algebrei, Editura Academiei, Bucharest, Romania, 1960

[edit] Sources

Short biography on ICI website
Alexandru Ciorănescu, Ion Barbu, Twayne Publishers, Boston, 1981 ISBN 0805764321. Translated in Romanian, Editura Fundației Culturale Române, Bucharest, 1996. ISBN 9735770423
Wladimir G. Boskoff, Bogdan Suceavă, Barbilian spaces: the history of a geometric idea, Historia Mathematica 34 (2007), no. 2, 221–224. doi:10.1016/j.hm.2006.06.001 MR 2320101