Richard Courant German and American mathematician Date of Birth: 08.01.1888 Country: USA

Biography of Richard Courant

Richard Courant was a German and American mathematician, educator, and scientific organizer. He was born into a Jewish family and in the 1890s, his family frequently moved from place to place, residing in Glatz, Breslau, and eventually Berlin in 1905. Richard enrolled at the University of Breslau but realized that the level of education there was insufficient, so he continued his studies at the University of Zurich and later at the University of Göttingen.

In Göttingen, Courant became a student and assistant of David Hilbert. In 1910, he received his doctorate for his work on "The Application of Dirichlet's Principle to the Problem of Conformal Mapping." In 1914, he was called to serve in the German Imperial Army during World War I and participated on the French front. After being demobilized in 1919, Courant was appointed as a professor at the University of Münster. In 1920, he returned to Göttingen, where he remained as a professor until 1933.

Following the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany and the destruction of the Mathematical Institute in Göttingen, Courant was forced to emigrate. He spent one year in Cambridge before moving to the United States. In 1936, Courant became a professor at New York University. He was entrusted with the task of establishing a special mathematical institute in New York, which he successfully accomplished. In 1958, at the age of 70, Courant stepped down as the director of the Mathematical Institute but continued to actively collaborate with it. In 1964, the institution was renamed the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. In 1966, Courant became a foreign member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Courant's major scientific contributions were in the theory of conformal mappings and boundary value problems for mathematical physics equations. He passed away on January 27, 1972, in New York City.