Thomas Joannes Stieltjes | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1856-12-29)29 December 1856 Zwolle, Netherlands |
| Died | 31 December 1894(1894-12-31) (aged 38) Toulouse, France |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Alma mater | École Normale Supérieure |
| Known for |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | TU Delft University of Leiden |
| Doctoral advisor | Charles Hermite Jean Gaston Darboux |
Thomas Joannes Stieltjes (/ˈstiːltʃəz/STEEL-chəz,[1]Dutch:[ˈtoːmɑˈstiltɕəs]; 29 December 1856 – 31 December 1894) was a Dutchmathematician. He was a pioneer in the field ofmoment problems and contributed to the study ofcontinued fractions. The Thomas Stieltjes Institute for Mathematics atLeiden University, dissolved in 2011, was named after him, as is theRiemann–Stieltjes integral.
Stieltjes was born inZwolle on 29 December 1856. His father (who had the same first names) was a civil engineer and politician. Stieltjes Sr. was responsible for the construction of variousharbours aroundRotterdam, and also seated in theDutch parliament. Stieltjes Jr. went to university at the Polytechnical School inDelft in 1873. Instead of attending lectures, he spent his student years reading the works ofGauss andJacobi — the consequence of this being he failed his examinations. There were two further failures (in 1875 and 1876), and his father despaired. His father was friends withH. G. van de Sande Bakhuyzen (who was the director ofLeiden University), and Stieltjes Jr. was able to get a job as an assistant atLeiden Observatory.
Soon afterwards, Stieltjes began a correspondence withCharles Hermite which lasted for the rest of his life.[2] He originally wrote to Hermite concerningcelestial mechanics, but the subject quickly turned to mathematics and he began to devote his spare time to mathematical research.
The director ofLeiden Observatory, van de Sande-Bakhuyzen, responded quickly to Stieltjes' request on 1 January 1883 to stop his observational work to allow him to work more on mathematical topics. In 1883, he also married Elizabeth Intveld in May. She also encouraged him to move from astronomy to mathematics. And in September, Stieltjes was asked to substitute atUniversity of Delft for F.J. van den Berg. From then until December of that year, he lectured onanalytical geometry and ondescriptive geometry. He resigned his post at the observatory at the end of that year.
In 1884, Stieltjes applied for a chair inGroningen. He was initially accepted, but in the end turned down by the Department of Education, since he lacked the required diplomas. In 1884, Hermite and professorDavid Bierens de Haan arranged for an honorary doctorate to be granted to Stieltjes byLeiden University, enabling him to become a professor.[3] In 1885, he was appointed as member of theRoyal Dutch Academy of Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, KNAW), and the next year he became a foreign member.[4] In 1889, he was appointed professor of differential and integral calculus atToulouse University.[5]
Stieltjes died on 31 December 1894 inToulouse, France. He was buried inTerre-Cabade cemetery [fr] on 2 January 1895.
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Stieltjes worked on almost all branches ofanalysis,continued fractions andnumber theory. For his work, he is sometimes referred to as "the father of the analytic theory of continued fractions".
His work is also seen as important as a first step towards the theory ofHilbert spaces. Other important contributions to mathematics that he made involveddiscontinuous functions anddivergent series,differential equations,interpolation, thegamma function andelliptic functions. He became known internationally because of theRiemann–Stieltjes integral.
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Stieltjes' work on continued fractions earned him the Ormoy Prize (Prix Ormoy) of theAcadémie des Sciences in 1893. In 1884 the University of Leiden awarded him an honorary doctorate, and in 1885 he was elected to membership in the Royal Academy of Sciences of Amsterdam.[6]
In honour of Stieltjes, since 1996, the Stieltjes Prize (Stieltjesprijs) has been awarded annually for the bestPhDthesis in mathematics to a student of any Dutch university. All mathematics institutes and departments of Dutch universities are asked for an overview of the PhDs that have taken place in the academic year. The list thus obtained forms the list of candidates for the prize.[7] The award consists of a certificate and an amount of 1200Euros.[8]
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