Elias M. Stein | |
|---|---|
 Stein in 2008 | |
| Born | (1931-01-13)January 13, 1931 |
| Died | December 23, 2018(2018-12-23) (aged 87) Somerville,New Jersey, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago (Ph.D., 1955) |
| Known for | Stein–Strömberg theorem Princeton Lectures on Analysis textbook series |
| Spouse | Elly Intrator |
| Children | Karen Stein Jeremy C. Stein |
| Awards | Rolf Schock Prize in Mathematics(1993) Wolf Prize(1999) National Medal of Science(2001) Leroy P. Steele Prize (2002) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Princeton University |
| Thesis | Linear Operators on Lp Spaces (1955) |
| Doctoral advisor | Antoni Zygmund |
| Doctoral students | |
Elias Menachem Stein (January 13, 1931 – December 23, 2018) was an American mathematician who was a leading figure in the field ofharmonic analysis. He was theAlbert Baldwin Dod Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus, atPrinceton University, where he was a faculty member from 1963 until his death in 2018.
Stein was born inAntwerp, in theAntwerp Province of theFlemish Region of Belgium, into anAshkenazi Jewish family to parents, Elkan Stein and Chana Goldman.[1] After theGerman invasion in 1940, the Stein family fled to the United States, first arriving in New York City.[1] He graduated fromStuyvesant High School in 1949,[1] where he was classmates with futureFields MedalistPaul Cohen,[2] before moving on to theUniversity of Chicago for college. In 1955, Stein earned a Ph.D. from theUniversity of Chicago under the direction ofAntoni Zygmund. He began teaching atMIT in 1955, moved to the University of Chicago in 1958 as an assistant professor, and in 1963 became a full professor at Princeton.
Stein worked primarily in the field ofharmonic analysis, and made contributions in both extending and clarifyingCalderón–Zygmund theory. These includeStein interpolation (a variable-parameter version ofcomplex interpolation), theStein maximal principle (showing that under many circumstances,almost everywhere convergence is equivalent to the boundedness ofamaximal function),Stein complementary series representations,Nikishin–Pisier–Stein factorization in operator theory, theTomas–Stein restriction theorem inFourier analysis, theKunze–Stein phenomenon inconvolution onsemisimple groups, theCotlar–Stein lemma concerning the sum of almost orthogonal operators, and the Fefferman–Stein theory of theHardy space and the space of functions of bounded mean oscillation.
He wrote numerous books on harmonic analysis (see e.g. [1,3,5]), which are often cited as the standard references on the subject. HisPrinceton Lectures in Analysis series [6,7,8,9] were penned for his sequence of undergraduate courses on analysis at Princeton. Stein was also noted as having trained a high number of graduate students. According to theMathematics Genealogy Project, Stein had at least 52 graduate students—including theFields medalistsCharles Fefferman andTerence Tao—some of whom went on to shape modern Fourier analysis.
His honors included theSteele Prize (1984 and 2002), theSchock Prize in Mathematics (1993), theWolf Prize in Mathematics (1999), and theNational Medal of Science (2001). In addition, he had fellowships toNational Science Foundation,Sloan Foundation,Guggenheim Foundation, andNational Academy of Sciences. Stein was elected as a member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1982.[3] In 2005, Stein was awarded theStefan Bergman prize in recognition of his contributions in real, complex, and harmonic analysis. In 2012 he became a fellow of theAmerican Mathematical Society.[4]
In 1959, he married Elly Intrator.[1] They had two children, Karen Stein andJeremy C. Stein,[1] and grandchildren named Alison, Jason, and Carolyn. His son Jeremy is a professor of financial economics at Harvard, former adviser toTim Geithner andLawrence Summers, and served on theFederal Reserve Board of Governors from 2012 to 2014. Elias Stein died of complications oflymphoma in 2018, aged 87.[5]
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Dod Professor of Mathematics atPrinceton University 1975–2018 | Succeeded by vacant |
