Monday, September 16, 2013

Rudolf Emil Kalman

Rudolf Emil Kalman

 


Born: May 19, 1930 Budapest, Hungary


He received the bachelor's degree (S.B.) and the master's degree (S.M.) in electrical engineering, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953 and 1954 respectively. He received the doctorate degree (D. Sci.) from Columbia University in 1957. His major positions include that of Research Mathematician at R.I.A.S. (Research Institute for Advanced Study) in Baltimore, between 1958-1964, Professor at Stanford University between 1964-1971, and from 1971 to 1992 Graduate Research Professor, and Director, at the Center for Mathematical System Theory, University of Florida, Gainesville. Moreover, since 1973 he has also held the chair for Mathematical System Theory at the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) Zurich. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the IEEE Medal of Honor (1974), the IEEE Centennial Medal (1984), the Kyoto Prize in High Technology from the Inamori foundation, Japan (1985), the Steele Prize of the American Mathematical Society (1987), and the Bellman Prize (1997). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), the National Academy of Engineering (USA), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (USA). He is a foreign member of the Hungarian, French, and Russian Academies of Science, and has received many honorary doctorates. He is married to Constantina nee Stavrou, and they have two children, Andrew and Elisabeth.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Lazare Nicolas Marguérite Carnot

Born: 13 May 1753 in Nolay, Burgundy, France Died: 2 Aug 1823 in Magdeburg, Prussian Saxony (now Germany)

Lazare Nicolas Marguérite Carnot  
Lazare Carnot graduated from the School of Engineering in Mézières in 1773. In 1778 he wrote Essai sur les machines en général to submit for a prize in a competition. He revised it in 1781 and it was eventually published in 1783. It deals with mechanics and areas of engineering. The following year he declined an invitation to enter the Prussian service and, in the same year he was promoted to captain.
From 1787 he became a member of the Dijon Academy while he was elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1791 and to the National Convention in 1792.
He directed the Army of the North after April 1793 becoming in that year a leading member of the Committee of General Defence and a member of the Committee of Public Safety.
In 1794, under direction from Carnot and Monge, a 'grande école' was set up called 'École centrale des travaux publiques' but its name was changed to 'École polytechnique' in the following year. Two years later his son Sadi Carnot was born.
The year 1797 was an eventful one for Carnot. In this year he published his famous text Réflexions sur la métaphysique du calcul infinitésimal. The book is introduced with the words:-
As however everything indicates that there will be a new turn in the culture of mathematics, the author deems it apposite to publish this monograph.
Carnot's approach to mathematics shows strongly his engineering background. Thiele writes in [13] that he
accepted mathematical expressions only insofar as the quantities contained in them were real and the operations involved held meaning. ... to Carnot negative quantities are impossible, and zero, just like infinity, is a limit. ... infinitely small quantities are real objects, being representable as differences between limits...
In the same year, 1797, the political situation in France became such that he could no longer remain with his strong republican views, and he fled to Switzerland going on to Nuremberg in Germany.
The following year Carnot returned to France when Napoleon became First Consul. He became Napoleon Bonaparte's minister of war for a period of five months and was promoted further to the rank of lieutenant-general.
Carnot is best known as a geometer. In 1801 he published De la correlation des figures de géométrie in which he tried to put pure geometry into a universal setting. He showed that several of the theorems of Euclid's Elements can be established from a single theorem.
In 1803 he published Géométrie de position in which sensed magnitudes were first used systematically in geometry. This work greatly extended his work of 1801 and in it Carnot again shows what quantities mean to him writing:-
Every quantity is a real object such that the mind can grasp it or at least its representation in calculation.
Carnot's military masterpiece De la défense des places fortes was published in 1809. He later served as military governor of Antwerp but after Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo he went into exile. He fled to Magdeburg, after going first to Warsaw, arriving in Magdeburg in November 1816.
Carnot's interests turned toward the steam engine with the first steam engine coming to Magdeburg in 1818. His son Sadi Carnot visited him in Magdeburg in 1821 and it is clear that Lazare Carnot influenced his son. Sadi Carnot published his masterpiece on the thermodynamics of the steam engine three years later.
Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson