Jovan Karamata

Jovan Karamata (Serbian Cyrillic: Јован Карамата) (1902–1967) was one of the greatest Serbian mathematicians of the 20th century.

Life

Jovan Karamata was born in Zagreb on February 1, 1902 in a Serbian family descending from a merchant family from the city of Zemun in Serbia. His family's business affairs on the borders of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires were very well known. In 1914, he finished most of his primary school in Zemun but because of constant warfare on the borderlands, Karamata's father sent him, together with his brothers and his sister, to Switzerland for their own safety. In Lausanne, 1920, he finished primary school oriented towards mathematics and sciences. In the same year he enrolled at the Engineering faculty of Belgrade University and, after several years moved to the Philosophy and Mathematicians sector, where he graduated in 1925.

He spent the years 1927–1928 in Paris, as a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, and in 1928 he became Assistant for Mathematics at the Faculty of Philosophy of Belgrade University. In 1930 he became Assistant Professor, in 1937 Associate Professor and, after the end of World War II, in 1950 he became Full Professor. In 1951 he was elected Full Professor at the University of Geneva. In 1933 he became a member of Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts, Czech Royal Society in 1936, and Serbian Royal Academy in 1939 as well as a fellow of Serbian Academy of Sciences in 1948. He was one of the founders of the "Mathematical Institute" of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1946.

Karamata was member of the Swiss, French and German mathematical societies, the French Association for the Development of Science, and the primary editor of the journal "L’Enseignement Mathématique" in Geneva. He also taught at the University of Novi Sad.

In 1931 he married Emilija Nikolajevic, who gave birth to their two sons and a daughter. His wife died in 1959. After a long illness, Jovan Karamata died on August 14, 1967 in Geneva. His ashes rest in his native town of Zemun.

Legacy

Jovan Karamata was one of the most prolific mathematicians of his time. He published 122 scientific papers, 15 monographs and text-books as well as 7 professional-pedagogical papers. Karamata is best known for his work on mathematical analysis. He created the theory of regularly-varying sequences and theorems of Tauberian type: today described as Karamata's Tauberian theorems. Karamata also added to numerous other theorems, including the "Weierstrass theorem", "Schmidt theorem", and "Littlewood's theorem". These works, as well as those related to slowly varying functions, Mercer’s theorems, inequalities, trigonometrical integrals, Froullani’s integrals, and others have frequently been quoted in various papers. In 1935 he introduced the brackets and braces notation for Stirling numbers (analogous to the binomial coefficients notation), which is now known as Karamata notation. In Serbia, Karamata is immortalized in the "Karamata's (Yugoslav) school of mathematics”. Today, Karamata is the most frequently cited Serbian mathematician. He is the developer and co-developer of dozens of mathematical theorems and has a lasting influence in 20th century mathematics. He is also cited for Karamata's Inequality.

See also

*Mathematical analysis
*Tauberian theorem
*Lah number
*Stirling number
*John Edensor Littlewood
*Mihailo Petrovic

Resources

External links

* [http://www.emis.de/journals/NSJOM/32_1/r_1.pdf Jovan Karamata Biography and Analysis of Work]
* [http://www.emis.de/journals/BSANU/26/r2001_1.pdf Jovan Karamata Biography and Achievements]

Further reading

#N.H. Bingham, C.M. Goldie, J.L. Teugels, Regular Variation, Encyclopedia of Mathematics and its Applications, vol. 27, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987.
#J.L. Geluk, L. de Haan, Regular Variation Extensions and Tauberian Theorems, CWI Tract 40, Amsterdam, 1987.
#Maric V, Radasin Z, "Regularly Varying Functions in Asymptotic Analysis"
#Nikolic A, "About two famous results of Jovan Karamata", Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences
#Nikolic A, "Jovan Karamata (1902–1967)", Lives and work of the Serbian scientists, SANU, Biographies and bibliographies, Book 5
#Tomic M, "Academician Jovan Karamata", on occasion of his death, SANU, Vol CDXXIII, t. 37, Belgrade, 1968 (in Serbian)
#Tomic M, "Jovan Karamata (1902–1967)", L’Enseignement Mathématique
#Tomic M, Aljancic S, "Remembering Karamata", Publications de l’Institut Mathématique