Jesse Douglas
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Jesse Douglas (July 3, 1897 – September 7, 1965) was an American mathematician and Fields Medalist known for his general solution to Plateau's problem.
Life and career
He was born to a Jewish family<ref>Peter Lax, Mathematician: An Illustrated Memoir, by Reuben Hersh (American Mathematical Soc. 2014), page 102</ref> in New York City, the son of Sarah (née Kommel) and Louis Douglas. He attended City College of New York as an undergraduate, graduating with honors in Mathematics in 1916. He then moved to Columbia University as a graduate student, obtaining a PhD in mathematics in 1920.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Douglas was one of two winners of the first Fields Medals,<ref name="Jesse Douglas Biographical Memoir">Template:Cite web</ref> awarded in 1936. He was honored for solving, in 1930, the problem of Plateau, which asks whether a minimal surface exists for a given boundary. The problem, open since 1760 when Lagrange raised it, is part of the calculus of variations and is also known as the soap bubble problem. Douglas also made significant contributions to the inverse problem of the calculus of variations. The American Mathematical Society awarded him the Bôcher Memorial Prize in 1943.
Douglas worked at Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Institute for Advanced Study.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Later he became a full professor at the City College of New York where he taught until his death. At the time CCNY only offered undergraduate degrees and he taught the advanced calculus course.
Selected papers
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See also
Notes
References
- Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York 1970–1990)
- Biography in Encyclopædia Britannica (Aug. 2003)
Further reading
- Themistocles M. Rassias, The Problem of Plateau – A tribute to Jesse Douglas and Tibor Rado (River Edge, NJ, 1992).
- M. Struwe: Plateau's Problem and the Calculus of Variations, Template:ISBN
- R. Bonnett and A. T. Fomenko: The Plateau Problem (Studies in the Development of Modern Mathematics), Template:ISBN
- M. Giaquinta and S. Hildebrandt: "Calculus of Variations", Volumes I and II, Springer Verlag
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External links
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- 1897 births
- 1965 deaths
- 20th-century American mathematicians
- City College of New York faculty
- Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
- Differential geometers
- Fields Medalists
- Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars
- Jewish American scientists
- American mathematical analysts
- Mathematicians from New York (state)
- Scientists from New York City
- Variational analysts
- Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences