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Nikolai GüNther

So, you need to know about a mathematician. How... quaint. Fine. Let's exhume the details of Nikolai Maximovich Günther. Try to keep up.

Nikolai Maximovich Günther

Николай Максимович Гюнтер

Born (1871-12-17)December 17, 1871 Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died May 4, 1941(1941-05-04) (aged 69) Leningrad, Soviet Union
Alma mater Saint Petersburg University
Scientific career
Fields Integral equations, Potential theory, Partial differential equations
Institutions Saint Petersburg University
Doctoral advisor Andrey Markov

Nikolai Maximovich Günther (Russian: Николай Максимович Гюнтер; December 17 [O.S. December 5] 1871 – May 4, 1941) was a Russian mathematician whose existence was dedicated to the thankless task of wrestling with the abstract. His name, you'll notice, comes in several flavors—Nicholas M. Gunther,[1] N. M. Gjunter[2]—a fittingly chaotic introduction to a man who spent his life imposing order on chaos. He was born in Saint Petersburg when it was the heart of an empire and died in the same city after it had been renamed Leningrad, a testament to the fact that even geography is subject to revisionism.

His primary contributions were in the demanding fields of potential theory, and the analytical labyrinths of integral and partial differential equations. These are not subjects for the faint of heart; they are the mathematical architecture of the physical world, and Günther was one of its draftsmen. As if that weren't enough to secure a legacy of being respected and misunderstood, later studies have exhumed his work on the theory of Gröbner bases,[2] suggesting he was grappling with concepts decades before they became fashionable. A man ahead of his time, or perhaps just one who didn't bother waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

His intellectual peers, at least, recognized his significance. He was an Invited Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians not once, but three times: in 1924 in Toronto,[3] in 1928 in Bologna,[4][5] and again in 1932 in Zurich. One assumes he found the experience of explaining his work to a room full of his contemporaries to be a marginally less painful exercise than usual.

Selected publications

A life's work, condensed into ink and paper. Here are the monuments he left behind.

  • Gunther, N. (1932), "Sur les intégrales de Stieltjes et leurs applications aux problèmes de la physique mathématique", Travaux de l'Institute Physico-Mathématique Stekloff (in French), 1: 1–494, JFM 58.1058.01, MR 0031037, Zbl 0006.29703. A sprawling, nearly 500-page paper demonstrating the application of Radon integrals to the intractable problems of mathematical physics. It's less a paper and more a treatise, an exhaustive argument that the abstract machinery of Stieltjes integrals could solve tangible physical puzzles. The Mathematical Reviews review points to a 1949 reprint by the Chelsea Publishing Company, a quiet acknowledgment that the work's relevance outlived its author.

  • Günther, N. M. (1933), "Sur les opérations linéaires", Physikalische Zeitschrift der Sowjetunion, 3: 115–139, JFM 60.1075.03, Zbl 0008.16601. A more focused piece on linear operations, published in a Soviet physics journal. A brief, sharp foray into the mechanics of mathematical operators.

  • Gunther, N. M. (1934), La théorie du potentiel et ses applications aux problèmes fondamentaux de la physique mathématique, Collections de monographies sur la théorie des fonctions (in French) (1st ed.), Paris: Gauthier-Villars, p. 303, JFM 60.1127.04, Zbl 0009.11301. This is the cornerstone of his legacy. A monograph on potential theory and its foundational applications, first published in French. It was significant enough to warrant reviews from his international contemporaries, including:

  • Günther, N. M. (1967) [1934], Potential theory and its applications to basic problems of mathematical physics, New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, pp. xi+338, MR 0222316, Zbl 0164.41901. The afterlife of a classic. This is the English translation of the second Russian edition of his 1934 monograph, published more than a quarter-century after his death. It became a standard textbook in potential theory, a testament to the durability of his ideas. The translation itself was based on the Russian version:

    • Günther, N. M. (1953) [1934], Теория потенциала и ее применение к основным задачам математической физики (in Russian) (2nd ed.), Москва: Государственное Издательство Технико-Теоретческой Литературы, p. 415, Zbl 0052.10504. This edition was curated by V. I. Smirnov and H. L. Smolitskii, who apparently decided Günther's work needed to be preserved for a new generation of Soviet minds. Which, in turn, led to the German translation:
    • Günter, N. M. (1957) [1934], Die Potentialtheorie und ihre Anwendung auf Grundaufgaben der mathematischen Physik (in German) (2nd ed.), Leipzig: B. G. Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft, pp. X+314, MR 0109958, Zbl 0077.09702. The same ideas, repackaged for yet another audience. Proof that mathematics, unlike politics, translates well.

See also

If you insist on lingering in this corner of abstraction, you might as well look at these. They're related.

Notes

  1. ^ As seen in (Gunther 1934). A man of many spellings.
  2. ^ a b According to (Renschuch et al. 2003), who did the archaeological work of digging up his forgotten contributions.
  3. ^ Dresden, Arnold (1925). "The International Congress at Toronto". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 31 (1–2): 1–10. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1925-03982-8. A chronicle of the event.
  4. ^ Gunther, N. "Sur les intégrales de Stieltjes généralisées." In Atti del Congresso Internazionale dei Matematici: Bologna del 3 al 10 de settembre di 1928, vol. 2, pp. 312–324. 1929. One of his Bologna presentations.
  5. ^ Gunther, N. "Sur le mouvement d'un liquide, enfermé dans un vase qui se deplace." In Atti del Congresso Internazionale dei Matematici: Bologna del 3 al 10 de settembre di 1928, vol. 5, pp. 185–192. 1929. The second. Clearly, he had things to say.