Salomon Bochner American mathematician Date of Birth: 20.08.1889 Country: USA

Biography of Solomon Bochner

Solomon Bochner was an American mathematician of Austro-Hungarian origin. He is best known for his work in mathematical analysis, probability theory, and differential geometry. Bochner was born into a Jewish family in what is now Poland, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Due to the threat of Russian invasion in Galicia at the start of World War I, Bochner's family moved to Germany, which seemed safer at the time.

Bochner began his education at a gymnasium and later attended the University of Berlin, where he became a student of the renowned mathematician Erhard Schmidt. He worked on a topic that later grew into the "core of Bergman". After completing his research, Bochner left academia to assist his family, who were struggling due to the high inflation at the time.

After some time, Bochner returned to mathematical research and his career began to flourish. From 1924 to 1933, he even taught at the University of Munich. However, his academic career in Germany came to an end in 1933 when the Nazis came to power. It became dangerous for him to stay in the country. Fortunately, Bochner found refuge in Princeton University, a prestigious institution.

From 1945 to 1948, Bochner worked at a research institute and in 1959, he was appointed to a named professorship, which he held until his retirement. In 1968, at the age of nearly 70, Bochner left Princeton and soon after received another named professorship at Rice University. He continued his work there until his death in 1982.

In addition to his academic achievements, Bochner held various administrative positions, including serving as the dean of the faculty at Rice University from 1969 to 1976.

Throughout his career, Bochner made significant contributions to the study of almost periodic functions, the theory of Fourier transformations, and the geometry of manifolds. His work on Bochner-Riesz means led to important results on the behavior of Fourier transformations in Euclidean spaces under rotational transformations.

Bochner's formula for curvature, published in 1946, stands out among his contributions to differential geometry. He also co-authored the book "Curvature and Betti Numbers" with Kentaro Yano in 1953, a work that laid the foundation for the theory of vanishing theorems, Kodaira's theorem, representation theory, and spin manifolds.

Solomon Bochner passed away on May 2, 1982, in Houston, Texas, at the age of 82.