Aryeh Dvoretzky
Encyclopedia
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
, the winner of the 1973 Israel Prize
Israel Prize
The Israel Prize is an award handed out by the State of Israel and is largely regarded as the state's highest honor. It is presented annually, on Israeli Independence Day, in a state ceremony in Jerusalem, in the presence of the President, the Prime Minister, the Knesset chairperson, and the...
in Mathematics. He is best known for his work in functional analysis
Functional analysis
Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of vector spaces endowed with some kind of limit-related structure and the linear operators acting upon these spaces and respecting these structures in a suitable sense...
, statistics
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
and probability
Probability
Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...
.
Biography
Dvoretzky was born in 1916 in Khorol, Imperial RussiaRussian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
(now Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
). His family moved to Palestine in 1922. He received his Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...
in 1941. His advisor was Michael Fekete. He continued working in Jerusalem, becoming a Full Professor in 1951, the first graduate of the Hebrew University to achieve this distinction. Dvoretzky later became the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences (1955–1956) and Vice President of the Hebrew University (1959–1961).
Dvoretzky had visiting appointments at a number of universities, including Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
, Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, Purdue University
Purdue University
Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...
, Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, and the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. He also visited twice the Institute for Advanced Study
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...
in Princeton
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...
(in 1948–1950 and in 1957–1958).
In 1975 he founded the Institute for Advanced Studies
Some Institutes for Advanced Study
The Some Institutes for Advanced Study consortium organizes ten "institutes for advanced study" founded on the same principles as the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, which is also one of the members.- Overview :...
of Jerusalem based on the Princeton IAS model. He was elected president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, based in Jerusalem, was set up in 1961 by the State of Israel to foster contact between scholars from the sciences and humanities in Israel, to advise the government on research projects of national importance, and to promote excellence. It comprises...
(1974–1980) and later became the eighth president of the Weizmann Institute of Science
Weizmann Institute of Science
The Weizmann Institute of Science , known as Machon Weizmann, is a university and research institute in Rehovot, Israel. It differs from other Israeli universities in that it offers only graduate and post-graduate studies in the sciences....
(1986–1989). He was awarded an honorary doctorate
Honorary degree
An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements, such as matriculation, residence, study, and the passing of examinations...
from Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel. With nearly 30,000 students, TAU is Israel's largest university.-History:...
in 1996.
Dvoretzky made his expertize available to the Israel security establishment. In 1960 he became the head of Rafael, the weapons development authority. He later became the chief scientist for the Israel Ministry of Defense
Ministry of Defense (Israel)
The Ministry of Defence of the government of Israel, is the governmental department responsible for defending the State of Israel from internal and external military threats...
.
Dvoretzky's son Gideon was killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War
Yom Kippur War
The Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War or October War , also known as the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, was fought from October 6 to 25, 1973, between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria...
. Aryeh Dvoretzky's students included Branko Grünbaum
Branko Grünbaum
Branko Grünbaum is a Croatian-born mathematician and a professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle. He received his Ph.D. in 1957 from Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel....
and Joram Lindenstrauss
Joram Lindenstrauss
Joram Lindenstrauss is an Israeli mathematician working in functional analysis. He is professor emeritus of mathematics at the Einstein Institute of Mathematics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.-Biography:...
.
See also
- Dvoretzky's theoremDvoretzky's theoremIn mathematics, in the theory of Banach spaces, Dvoretzky's theorem is an important structural theorem proved by Aryeh Dvoretzky in the early 1960s. It answered a question of Alexander Grothendieck...
- Dvoretzky–Kiefer–Wolfowitz inequalityDvoretzky–Kiefer–Wolfowitz inequalityIn the theory of probability and statistics, the Dvoretzky–Kiefer–Wolfowitz inequality predicts how close an empirically determined distribution function will be to the distribution function from which the empirical samples are drawn...
- Dvoretzky–Rogers theorem