George David Birkhoff

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Birkhoff, George David

 

Born Mar. 21, 1884, in Overisel, Michigan; died Nov. 12,1944, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. American mathematician. Member of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.

Birkhoff was an assistant, then a professor at Harvard University (from 1912). He contributed works in statistical mechanics (ergodic theorems), theoretical mechanics (he established stability criteria of motion and the existence of periodic motion), and also a general theory of differential and difference equations, and a theory of dynamic systems. In his studies in mechanics he applied extensively the methods of topology and set theory.

WORKS

Collected Mathematical Papers, vols. 1–3. New York, 1950. (The third volume contains a bibliography of Birkhoff s works.)
In Russian translation:
Dinamicheskie sistemy. Moscow-Leningrad, 1941.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.