Atle selberg biography

On his life and mathematics", Bull. New York Times. Mathematics Encyclopedia. Hellenica World - Scientific Library. Atle Selberg. Three of Atle's brothers also became mathematicians. Henrik Selberg - was born in Bergen. He became professor of mathematics at the University of Oslo and was interested in complex functions. Sigmund became a professor of mathematics at the Norwegian Institute of Technology where he was interested in prime numbers.

Arne also became a professor at the Norwegian Institute of Technology. He was an applied mathematician with a particular interest in the design of suspension bridges. We have noted above that Atle's father moved to take up different positions so while Atle was growing up he lived in Voss, Bergen, and then in Gjovik where his father became principal of a school in Selberg was born in Lagesund, Norway.

His interest in mathematics was kindled at the age of 17when he came across the collected works of the enigmatic Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. In the same year, he wrote his first paper, On Some Arithmetical Identities. He went on to study at Oslo University, and gained his doctorate in He remained there throughout the second world war, working in isolation during the German occupation.

During this period, he produced many of his key papers on the Riemann Zeta function.

Atle selberg biography

The most famous question in this area, still unanswered, is the Riemann Hypothesis. One of Selberg's best known contributions shows that the hypothesis is indeed true in a positive proportion of all cases more precisely, that a positive proportion of the non-trivial zeros of the Riemann Zeta function are on the critical line. He was also modest, saying of his own work that it was usually based on rather simple ideas.

To his colleagues, he was a mathematician of extraordinary depth and power, well described by one colleague as "a mathematician's mathematician". Selberg was widely honoured. An international symposium was held to honour his 70 th birthday. His collected works were published in two volumes Springer, and Selberg married Hedvig Liebermann in ; they had a daughter and a son.

Hedvig also worked at the Institute for Advanced Study. She predeceased him in Selberg is survived by his second wife, Betty Compton Selberg, his two children and two stepdaughters.