Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars

Max_Laue

Max Theodor Felix von Laue (German: [maks fɔn ˈlaʊ̯ə] ; 9 October 1879 – 24 April 1960) was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals.In addition to his scientific endeavors with contributions in optics, crystallography, quantum theory, superconductivity, and the theory of relativity, Laue had a number of administrative positions which advanced and guided German scientific research and development during four decades. A strong objector to Nazism, he was instrumental in re-establishing and organizing German science after World War II.

Morton_L._Curtis

Morton Landers Curtis (November 11, 1921 – February 4, 1989) was an American mathematician, an expert on group theory and the W. L. Moody, Jr. Professor of Mathematics at Rice University.Born in Texas, Curtis earned a bachelor's degree in 1948 from Texas A&I University, and received his Ph.D. in 1951 from the University of Michigan under the supervision of Raymond Louis Wilder. Subsequently, he taught mathematics at Florida State University before moving to Rice. At Rice, he was the Ph.D. advisor of well-known mathematician John Morgan.Curtis is, with James J. Andrews, the namesake of the Andrews–Curtis conjecture concerning Nielsen transformations of balanced group presentations. Andrews and Curtis formulated the conjecture in a 1965 paper; it remains open. Together with Gustav A. Hedlund and Roger Lyndon, he proved the Curtis–Hedlund–Lyndon theorem characterizing cellular automata as being defined by continuous equivariant functions on a shift space.Curtis was the author of two books, Matrix Groups (Springer-Verlag, 1979), and Abstract Linear Algebra (Springer-Verlag, 1990).

Halsey_Royden

Halsey Lawrence Royden, Jr. (September 26, 1928 – August 22, 1993) was an American mathematician, specializing in complex analysis on Riemann surfaces, several complex variables, and complex differential geometry. Royden is the author of a popular textbook on real analysis.

Erich_Auerbach

Erich Auerbach (November 9, 1892 – October 13, 1957) was a German philologist and comparative scholar and critic of literature. His best-known work is Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, a history of representation in Western literature from ancient to modern times frequently cited as a classic in the study of realism in literature. Along with Leo Spitzer, Auerbach is widely recognized as one of the foundational figures of comparative literature.

Ragnar_Fjørtoft

Ragnar Fjørtoft (1 August 1913 – 28 May 1998) was an internationally recognized Norwegian meteorologist. He was part of a Princeton, New Jersey team that in 1950 performed the first successful numerical weather prediction using the ENIAC electronic computer. He was also a professor of meteorology at the University of Copenhagen and director of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.

Ludwig_Biermann

Ludwig Franz Benedikt Biermann (March 13, 1907 in Hamm – January 12, 1986 in München) was a German astronomer, obtaining his Ph.D. from Göttingen University in 1932.He made important contributions to astrophysics and plasma physics, discovering the Biermann battery. He predicted the existence of the solar wind which in 1947 he dubbed "solar corpuscular radiation".
He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in the fall of 1961. He won the Bruce Medal in 1967 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1974.
Asteroid 73640 Biermann is named in his honor.

Tullio_Levi-Civita

Tullio Levi-Civita, (English: , Italian: [ˈtulljo ˈlɛːvi ˈtʃiːvita]; 29 March 1873 – 29 December 1941) was an Italian mathematician, most famous for his work on absolute differential calculus (tensor calculus) and its applications to the theory of relativity, but who also made significant contributions in other areas. He was a pupil of Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro, the inventor of tensor calculus. His work included foundational papers in both pure and applied mathematics, celestial mechanics (notably on the three-body problem), analytic mechanics (the Levi-Civita separability conditions in the Hamilton–Jacobi equation) and hydrodynamics.