Walter Rudin

Walter Rudin
Born	May 2, 1921 Vienna, Austria
Died	May 20, 2010 (aged 89)
Nationality	American
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Alma mater	Duke University (B.A. 1947, Ph.D. 1949)
Doctoral advisor	John Jay Gergen
Doctoral students	Charles Dunkl
Known for	Mathematics textbooks; contributions to harmonic analysis and complex analysis[1]
Notable awards	American Mathematical Society Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition (1993)

Walter Rudin (May 2, 1921 – May 20, 2010)^[2] was an Austrian-American mathematician and professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.^[3]

He is known for three books on mathematical analysis: Principles of Mathematical Analysis, Real and Complex Analysis, and Functional Analysis. The first (affectionately referred to as "Baby Rudin") was written when Rudin was a Moore instructor at MIT for his undergraduate analysis course and is widely used as a textbook for undergraduate courses in analysis.

Biography

Rudin was born into a Jewish family in Austria in 1921. They fled to France after the Anschluss in 1938. When France surrendered to Germany in 1940, Rudin fled to England and served in the British navy for the rest of the war. After the war he left for the United States, and earned his B.A. from Duke University in North Carolina in 1947, and two years later earned a Ph.D. from the same institution. After that he was a C.L.E. Moore instructor at MIT, briefly taught in the University of Rochester, before becoming a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He remained at the University for 32 years.^[2] His research interests ranged from harmonic analysis to complex analysis. He received an honorary degree from the University of Vienna in 2006.

In 1953, he married fellow mathematician Mary Ellen Estill. The two resided in Madison, Wisconsin, in the eponymous Walter Rudin House, a home designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. They had four children.^[1]

Rudin died on May 20, 2010 after suffering from Parkinson's disease.^[2]

Selected publications

Ph.D. thesis

• Rudin, Walter (1950). Uniqueness Theory for Laplace Series (Thesis). Duke University.^[4]

Research articles

• "Uniqueness theory for Laplace series". Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 68 (2): 287–303. 1950. doi:10.1090/s0002-9947-1950-0033368-1. MR 0033368.
• "Factorization in the group algebra of the real line". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 43 (4): 339–340. 1957. doi:10.1073/pnas.43.4.339. PMC 528447. PMID 16578475.
• "Zero-sets in polydiscs". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 73 (4): 580–583. 1967. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1967-11758-0. MR 210934.
• "Holomorphic maps that extend to automorphisms of a ball" (PDF). Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 81 (3): 429–432. 1981. doi:10.1090/s0002-9939-1981-0597656-8. MR 597656.
• "${\mathbb{C}}^2$"(PDF)". Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 82 (4): 653–654. 1981. doi:10.1090/s0002-9939-1981-0614897-1. MR 614897.

Books

• Principles of Mathematical Analysis.
• Real and Complex Analysis.^[5]
• Functional Analysis.
• Fourier Analysis on Groups.^[6]
• Function Theory in Polydiscs.
• Function Theory in the Unit Ball of Cⁿ.^[7]
• The Way I Remember It. 1991. (Autobiography)

Major awards

• Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition (1993)

See also

• Helson-Kahane-Katznelson-Rudin Theorem
• Rudin-Shapiro sequence

References

1. "Vilas Professor Emeritus Walter Rudin died after a long illness on May 20, 2010".
2. Ziff, Deborah (May 21, 2010). "Noted UW-Madison mathematician Rudin dies at 89". Wisconsin State Journal. Retrieved May 21, 2010.
3. "Remembering Walter Rudin (1921–2010)" (PDF). Notices of the AMS 60 (3): 295–301. 2013. doi:10.1090/noti955.
4. Bilyk, Dmitriy; De Carli, Laura; Petukhov, Alexander; Stokolos, Alexander M.; Wick, Brett D., eds. (2012). "remarks on Walter Rudin's PhD thesis". Recent Advances in Harmonic Analysis and Applications: In Honor of Konstantin Oskolkov. Vol. 25. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 59.
5. Victor L. Shapiro (1968). "Review: Walter Rudin, Real and complex analysis". Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 74 (1): 79–83. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1968-11881-6.
6. J.-P. Kahane (1964). "Review: Walter Rudin, Fourier analysis on groups". Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 70 (2): 230–232. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1964-11092-2.
7. Steven G. Krantz (1981). "Review: Walter Rudin, Function theory in the unit ball of Cⁿ". Bull. Am. Math. Soc. (N. S.) 5 (3): 331–339.

External links

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Walter Rudin", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
• UW Mathematics Dept obituary
• MathDL obituary
• Walter Rudin at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Photos of Rudin Residence