Poul Heegaard (Danish: [ˈhe̝ˀˌkɒˀ] ; November 2, 1871, Copenhagen - February 7, 1948, Oslo) was a Danish mathematician active in the field of topology. His 1898 thesis introduced a concept now called the Heegaard splitting of a 3-manifold. Heegaard's ideas allowed him to make a careful critique of work of Henri Poincaré. Poincaré had overlooked the possibility of the appearance of torsion in the homology groups of a space.
Poul Heegaard | |
|---|---|
 Poul Heegaard, ca. 1940 | |
| Born | 2 November 1871 |
| Died | 7 February 1948 (aged 76) |
| Nationality | Danish |
| Alma mater | University of Copenhagen |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Topology |
| Institutions | University of Copenhagen, University of Oslo |
| Thesis | Forstudier til en topologisk Teori for de algebraiske Fladers Sammenhæng (1898) |
He later co-authored, with Max Dehn, a foundational article on combinatorial topology, in the form of an encyclopedia entry.[1]
Heegaard studied mathematics at the University of Copenhagen from 1889 to 1893. Following years of travelling, and teaching mathematics, he was appointed professor at University of Copenhagen in 1910. An English translation of his 1898 thesis, which laid a rigorous topological foundation for modern knot theory, may be found at https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/heegaardenglish.pdf. The section on "a visually transparent representation of the complex points of an algebraic surface" is especially important.
In 1936, Heegaard served as the President of The Third International Congress of Nationalists at The Nobel Institute. Following a talk titled "A Biologist's View of the Future of the White Race," Heegaard hosted a garden party for the Congress participants.[2]
Following a dispute with the faculty over, among other things, the hiring of Harald Bohr as professor at the University (which Heegaard opposed);[3] Heegaard accepted a professorship at Oslo in Norway, where he worked till his retirement in 1941.
Notes
edit- ^ Dehn, Max; Heegaard, Poul (1907). "Analysis situs". Enzyklop. d. math. Wissensch. Vol. III. pp. 153–220. JFM 38.0510.14.
- ^ "Programme of the Congress". National Archives. The Norwegian Committee of the Nationalist Academy for International Justice. 1936.
- ^ Munkholm, Ellen S.; Munkholm, Hans J. (1999), "Poul Heegaard", History of topology, North-Holland, Amsterdam, pp. 925–946, doi:10.1016/B978-044482375-5/50035-3, ISBN 978-0-444-82375-5, MR 1721129; see in particular pp. 937–938.
External links
edit
- Works by or about Poul Heegaard at the Internet Archive
- Heegaard, Poul (1898), Forstudier til en topologisk Teori for de algebraiske Fladers Sammenhang (PDF), Thesis (in Danish), JFM 29.0417.02
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Poul Heegaard", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
- "Heegaard home page"
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