Constantin Carathéodory | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Constantin Carathéodory | |
| Born | (1873-09-13)13 September 1873 |
| Died | 2 February 1950(1950-02-02) (aged 76) |
| Citizenship | Greek |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for |
|
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | |
| Doctoral advisor | Hermann Minkowski[1] |
| Doctoral students | |
| Signature | |
 | |
Constantin Carathéodory (Greek:Κωνσταντίνος Καραθεοδωρή,romanized: Konstantinos Karatheodori; 13 September 1873 – 2 February 1950) was aGreekmathematician who spent most of his professional career in Germany. He made significant contributions to real and complex analysis, the calculus of variations, and measure theory. He also created an axiomatic formulation of thermodynamics. Carathéodory is considered one of the greatest mathematicians of his era[3] and the most renownedGreek mathematician sinceantiquity.[4]
Constantin Carathéodory was born in 1873 inBerlin toGreek parents and grew up inBrussels. His fatherStephanos [tr], a lawyer, served as theOttoman ambassador toBelgium,St. Petersburg and Berlin. His mother, Despina, née Petrokokkinos, was from the island ofChios. The Carathéodory family, originally fromBosna, was well established and respected inConstantinople, and its members held many important governmental positions. His grandfather, theOttoman Greek physicianConstantinos Caratheodory, was the personal doctor to SultanAbdülmecit I.
The Carathéodory family spent 1874–75 in Constantinople, where Constantin's paternal grandfather lived, while his father Stephanos was on leave. Then in 1875 they went to Brussels when Stephanos was appointed there as Ottoman Ambassador. In Brussels, Constantin's younger sister Julia was born. The year 1879 was a tragic one for the family since Constantin's paternal grandfather died in that year, but much more tragically, Constantin's mother Despina died ofpneumonia inCannes. Constantin's maternal grandmother took on the task of bringing up Constantin and Julia in his father's home in Belgium. They employed a German maid who taught the children to speak German. Constantin was already bilingual in French and Greek by this time.
Constantin began his formal schooling at a private school in Vanderstock in 1881. He left after two years and then spent time with his father on a visit to Berlin, and also spent the winters of 1883–84 and 1884–85 on theItalian Riviera. Back in Brussels in 1885 he attended a grammar school for a year where he first began to become interested in mathematics. In 1886, he entered the high school Athénée Royal d'Ixelles and studied there until his graduation in 1891. Twice during his time at this school Constantin won a prize as the best mathematics student in Belgium.
At this stage Carathéodory began training as a military engineer. He attended the École Militaire de Belgique from October 1891 to May 1895 and he also studied at the École d'Application from 1893 to 1896. In 1897a war broke out between the Ottoman Empire and Greece. This put Carathéodory in a difficult position since he sided with the Greeks, yet his father served the government of the Ottoman Empire. Since he was a trained engineer he was offered a job in the British colonial service. This job took him to Egypt where he worked on the construction of theAssiut dam until April 1900. During periods when construction work had to stop due to floods, he studied mathematics from some textbooks he had with him, such asJordan'sCours d'Analyse andSalmon's text on the analytic geometry ofconic sections. He also visited theCheops pyramid and made measurements which he wrote up and published in 1901.[5] He also published a book on Egypt in the same year which contained a wealth of information on the history and geography of the country.[6]
Carathéodory studied engineering inBelgium at theRoyal Military Academy, where he was considered a charismatic and brilliant student.
Carathéodory had about 20 doctoral students among these beingHans Rademacher, known for his work on analysis and number theory, andPaul Finsler known for his creation ofFinsler space.
Carathéodory had numerous contacts in Germany. They included such famous names asHermann Minkowski,David Hilbert,Felix Klein,Albert Einstein,Edmund Landau,Hermann Amandus Schwarz, andLipót Fejér. During the difficult period of World War II, his close associates at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences were Perron and Tietze.
Einstein, then a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, was working on his general theory of relativity when he contacted Carathéodory for clarifications on theHamilton-Jacobi equation andcanonical transformations. He wanted to see a satisfactory derivation of the former and the origins of the latter. Einstein told Carathéodory his derivation was "beautiful" and recommended its publication in theAnnalen der Physik. Einstein employed the former in a 1917 paper titledZum Quantensatz von Sommerfeld und Epstein (On the Quantum Theorem of Sommerfeld and Epstein). Carathéodory explained some fundamental details of the canonical transformations and referred Einstein toE.T. Whittaker'sAnalytical Dynamics. Einstein was trying to solve the problem of "closed time-lines" or the geodesics corresponding to the closed trajectory of light and free particles in a static universe, which he introduced in 1917.[7]
Landau and Schwarz stimulated his interest in the study of complex analysis.[8]
While in Germany, Carathéodory retained numerous links with the Greek academic world, details of which can be found in Georgiadou's book. He was directly involved with the reorganization of Greek universities. An especially close friend and colleague in Athens was Nicolaos Kritikos who had attended his lectures at Göttingen, later going with him to Smyrna, then becoming professor at Athens Polytechnic. Kritikos and Carathéodory helped the Greek topologistChristos Papakyriakopoulos take a doctorate in topology at Athens University in 1943 under very difficult circumstances. While teaching at Athens University, Carathéodory had Evangelos Stamatis as an undergraduate student, who subsequently achieved considerable distinction as a scholar of ancient Greek mathematical classics.[9]
In his doctoral dissertation, Carathéodory showed how to extend solutions to discontinuous cases and studied isoperimetric problems.[8]
Previously, between the mid-1700s to the mid-1800s,Leonhard Euler,Adrien-Marie Legendre, andCarl Gustav Jacob Jacobi were able to establish necessary but insufficient conditions for the existence of a strong relative minimum. In 1879,Karl Weierstrass added a fourth that does indeed guarantee such a quantity exists.[10] Carathéodory constructed his method for deriving sufficient conditions based on the use of the Hamilton–Jacobi equation to construct a field of extremals. The ideas are closely related to light propagation in optics. The method became known asCarathéodory's method of equivalent variational problems orthe royal road to the calculus of variations.[10][11] A key advantage of Carathéodory's work on this topic is that it illuminates the relation between the calculus of variations and partial differential equations.[8] It allows for quick and elegant derivations of conditions of sufficiency in the calculus of variations and leads directly to theEuler-Lagrange equation and the Weierstrass condition. He published hisVariationsrechnung und Partielle Differentialgleichungen Erster Ordnung (Calculus of Variations and First-order Partial Differential Equations) in 1935.[10]
More recently, Carathéodory's work on the calculus of variations and the Hamilton-Jacobi equation has been taken into the theory ofoptimal control and dynamic programming.[10][12]
Carathéodory's theorem in convex geometry states that if a point of lies in theconvex hull of a set, then can be written as the convex combination of at most points in. Namely, there is a subset of consisting of or fewer points such that lies in the convex hull of. Equivalently, lies in an-simplex with vertices in, where. The smallest that makes the last statement valid for each in the convex hull ofP is defined as theCarathéodory's number of. Depending on the properties of, upper bounds lower than the one provided by Carathéodory's theorem can be obtained.[13]
He is credited with the authorship of theCarathéodory conjecture claiming that a closed convex surface admits at least twoumbilic points. The conjecture was proven in 2024 by Brendan Guilfoyle and Wilhelm Klingenberg.[14][15][16]
He proved anexistence theorem for the solution to ordinary differential equations under mild regularity conditions.
Another theorem of his on the derivative of a function at a point could be used to prove theChain Rule and the formula for thederivative of inverse functions.[17]
He greatly extended the theory ofconformal transformation[18] proving histheorem about the extension of conformal mapping to the boundary of Jordan domains. In studying boundary correspondence he originated the theory ofprime ends.[8] He exhibited an elementary proof of theSchwarz lemma.[8]
Carathéodory was also interested in the theory of functions of multiple complex variables. In his investigations on this subject he sought analogs of classical results from the single-variable case. He proved that a ball in is not holomorphically equivalent to the bidisc.[8]
He is credited with theCarathéodory extension theorem which is fundamental to modern measure theory. Later Carathéodory extended the theory from sets toBoolean algebras.
Thermodynamics had been a subject dear to Carathéodory since his time in Belgium.[19] In 1909, he published a pioneering work "Investigations on the Foundations of Thermodynamics"[20] in which he formulated the second law of thermodynamics axiomatically, that is, without the use of Carnot engines and refrigerators and only by mathematical reasoning. This is yet another version of the second law, alongside the statements ofClausius, and ofKelvin and Planck.[21] Carathéodory's version attracted the attention of some of the top physicists of the time, including Max Planck, Max Born, and Arnold Sommerfeld.[8] According to Bailyn's survey of thermodynamics, Carathéodory's approach is called "mechanical," rather than "thermodynamic."[22] Max Born acclaimed this "first axiomatically rigid foundation of thermodynamics" and he expressed his enthusiasm in his letters to Einstein.[23][19] However, Max Planck had some misgivings[24] in that while he was impressed by Carathéodory's mathematical prowess, he did not accept that this was a fundamental formulation, given the statistical nature of the second law.[19]
In his theory he simplified the basic concepts, for instanceheat is not an essential concept but a derived one.[25] He formulated the axiomatic principle of irreversibility in thermodynamics stating that inaccessibility of states is related to the existence of entropy, where temperature is the integration function. Thesecond law of thermodynamics was expressed via the following axiom: "In the neighbourhood of any initial state, there are states which cannot be approached arbitrarily close through adiabatic changes of state." In this connexion he coined the termadiabatic accessibility.[26]
Carathéodory's work inoptics is closely related to his method in the calculus of variations. In 1926 he gave a strict and general proof that no system of lenses and mirrors can avoidaberration, except for the trivial case of plane mirrors.In his later work he gave the theory of theSchmidt telescope.[27] In hisGeometrische Optik (1937), Carathéodory demonstrated the equivalence of Huygens' principle and Fermat's principle starting from the former using Cauchy's theory of characteristics. He argued that an important advantage of his approach was that it covers the integral invariants ofHenri Poincaré andÉlie Cartan and completes theMalus law. He explained that in his investigations in optics,Pierre de Fermat conceived a minimum principle similar to that enunciated byHero of Alexandria to study reflection.[28]
During the Second World War Carathéodory edited two volumes ofEuler's Complete Works dealing with the Calculus of Variations which were submitted for publication in 1946.[29]
At the time, Athens was the only major educational centre in the wider area and had limited capacity to sufficiently satisfy the growing educational needs of the eastern part of the Aegean Sea and theBalkans. Carathéodory, who was a professor at theUniversity of Berlin at the time, proposed the establishment of a new university[30] - the difficulties regarding the establishment of a Greek university inConstantinople led him to consider three other cities:Thessaloniki,Chios andSmyrna.[31]
At the invitation of the Greek Prime MinisterEleftherios Venizelos, he submitted a plan on 20 October 1919 for the creation of a new university atSmyrna in Asia Minor, to be namedIonian University of Smyrna. In 1920 Carathéodory was appointed dean of the university and took a major part in establishing the institution, touring Europe to buy books and equipment. The university, however, never actually admitted students, due to theWar in Asia Minor which ended in theGreat Fire of Smyrna. Carathéodory managed to save books from the library and was only rescued at the last moment by a journalist who took him by rowboat to the battleship Naxos which was standing by.[32] Carathéodory brought to Athens some of the university library and stayed there, teaching at the university and technical school until 1924.
In 1924 Carathéodory was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Munich, and held this position until retirement in 1938. He later worked at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences until his death in 1950.
The new Greek university in the broader area of the Southeast Mediterranean region, as originally envisioned by Carathéodory, finally materialised with the establishment of theAristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1925.[33]
Carathéodory excelled at languages, much like many members of his family.Greek andFrench were his first languages, and he masteredGerman with such perfection, that his writings composed in the German language are stylistic masterworks.[34] Carathéodory also spoke and wroteEnglish,Italian,Turkish, and theancient languages without any effort. Such an impressive linguistic arsenal enabled him to communicate and exchange ideas directly with other mathematicians during his numerous travels, and greatly extended his fields of knowledge.
Much more than that, Carathéodory was a treasured conversation partner for his fellow professors in the Munich Department of Philosophy. The well-respected Germanphilologist and professor of ancient languages,Kurt von Fritz, praised Carathéodory on the grounds that from him one could learn an endless amount about the old and new Greece, the old Greek language, and Hellenic mathematics. Von Fritz conducted numerous philosophical discussions with Carathéodory.
The mathematician sent his son Stephanos and daughter Despina to a German high school, but they also obtained daily additional instruction in Greek language and culture from a Greek priest, and at home he allowed them to speak Greek only.
Carathéodory was a talented public speaker, and was often invited to give speeches. In 1936, it was he who handed out the first everFields Medals at the meeting of theInternational Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo, Norway.[8]
In 2002, in recognition of his achievements, the University of Munich named one of the largest lecture rooms in the mathematical institute the Constantin-Carathéodory Lecture Hall.[35]
In the town of Nea Vyssa, Caratheodory's ancestral home, a unique family museum is to be found. The museum is located in the central square of the town near to its church, and includes a number of Karatheodory's personal items, as well as letters he exchanged with Albert Einstein. More information is provided at the original website of the club,http://www.s-karatheodoris.gr.
At the same time, Greek authorities had long since intended to create a museum honoring Karatheodoris inKomotini, a major town of the northeastern Greek region, more than 200 km away from his home town above. On 21 March 2009, the "Karatheodoris" Museum (Καραθεοδωρής) opened its gates to the public in Komotini.[36][37][38]
The coordinator of the museum, Athanasios Lipordezis (Αθανάσιος Λιπορδέζης), has noted that the museum provides a home for original manuscripts of the mathematician running to about 10,000 pages, including correspondence with the German mathematicianArthur Rosenthal for the algebraization of measure. At the showcase, visitors are also able to view the books" Gesammelte mathematische Schriften Band 1,2,3,4 ", "Mass und ihre Algebraiserung", " Reelle Functionen Band 1", " Zahlen/Punktionen Funktionen ", and a number of others. Handwritten letters by Carathéodory toAlbert Einstein andHellmuth Kneser, as well as photographs of the Carathéodory family, are on display.
Efforts to furnish the museum with more exhibits are ongoing.[39][40][41]
A complete list of Carathéodory's journal article publications can be found in hisCollected Works(Ges. Math. Schr.). Notable publications are:
Media related toConstantin Caratheodory at Wikimedia Commons| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
