Shizuo Kakutani

Shizuo Kakutani

Shizuo Kakutani in 1970
Native name 角谷 静夫
Born (1911-08-28)August 28, 1911
Ōsaka
Died August 17, 2004(2004-08-17) (aged 92)
New Haven, Connecticut
Nationality Japanese American
Fields Mathematics
Institutions Yale University
Alma mater Tohoku University
Doctoral advisor Shimizu Tatsujirō
Doctoral students Roy Adler
Anatole Beck
Alexandra Bellow
Arshag Hajian
James Rovnyak
Known for Kakutani fixed-point theorem

Shizuo Kakutani (角谷 静夫 Kakutani Shizuo, August 28, 1911 in Ōsaka – August 17, 2004 in New Haven, Connecticut) was a Japanese-born American mathematician, best known for his eponymous fixed-point theorem.

Kakutani attended Tohoku University in Sendai, where his advisor was Tatsujirō Shimizu. At one point he spent two years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton at the invitation of the mathematician Hermann Weyl. While there, he also met John von Neumann.

Kakutani received his Ph.D. in 1941 from Osaka University[1] and taught there through World War II. He returned to the Institute for Advanced Study in 1948, and was given a professorship by Yale in 1949, where he won a students choice award for excellence in teaching.[2]

Kakutani received two awards of the Japan Academy, the Imperial Prize and the Academy Prize in 1982, for his scholarly achievements in general and his work on functional analysis in particular.

The Kakutani fixed-point theorem is a generalization of Brouwer's fixed-point theorem, holding for generalized correspondences instead of functions. Its most important uses are in proving the existence of Nash equilibria in game theory, and the Arrow–Debreu–McKenzie model of general equilibrium theory.

Kakutani's other mathematical contributions include the Kakutani skyscraper, a concept in ergodic theory (a branch of mathematics that studies dynamical systems with an invariant measure and related problems). They also include his solution of the Poisson equation using the methods of stochastic analysis.

The Collatz conjecture is also known as the Kakutani conjecture.

His daughter, Michiko Kakutani, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning literary critic for the New York Times.

See also

List of books available in English

References

  1. ↑ Shizuo Kakutani at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. ↑ Yale University, Devane Medal

External links

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