Constantin Carathéodory

Constantin Carathéodory (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Καραθεοδωρή) (September 13, 1873 – February 2, 1950) was a Greek mathematician of the Modern Era. He made significant contributions to the theory of functions of a real variable, the calculus of variations, and measure theory. His work also includes important results in conformal representations and in the theory of boundary correspondence.

Constantin Carathéodory was born in Berlin from Greek parents and grew up in Brussels, where his father served as the Ottoman ambassador to Belgium. The Carathéodory family was well-established and respected in Constantinople, and its members held many important governmental positions.

Carathéodory studied engineering in Belgium, where he was considered a charismatic and brilliant student. In 1900 he entered the University of Berlin. In the years 1902-1904 he completed his graduate studies in the University of Göttingen under the supervision of Hermann Minkowski. During the years 1909-1920 he held various lecturing positions in Hannover, Breslau, Göttingen and Berlin.

On 20 October 1919 he submitted a plan for the creation of a new University in Greece, to be named Ionian University. This university never actually opened for students due to the Asia Minor Disaster in 1922, but the present day University of the Aegean is a continuation of Carathéodory's original plan.

In 1920 Carathéodory accepted a post in the University of Smyrna, invited by Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos. He took a major part in establishing the institution, but his efforts ended in 1922 when the Greek population was expelled from the city during the Greco-Turkish War.

Having been forced to move to Athens, Carathéodory brought along with him some of the university library, thus saving it from destruction. He stayed at Athens and taught at the university and technical school until 1924.

In 1924 Carathéodory was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Munich, and he held this position until his death in 1950.

Carathéodory formulated the axiomatic principle of irreversibility in thermodynamics in 1909, stating that inaccessibility of states is related to the existence of entropy, where temperature is the integration function.

1926 he gave a strict and general proof, that no system of lenses and mirrors can avoid aberration, except for the trivial case of plane mirrors.

Among other accomplishments, one should mention Carathéodory's remarkable talent for languages. In addition to Greek and French as native languages, he published most of his works in German and also fluently spoke English, Italian and Turkish. Such an impressive linguistic arsenal enabled him to communicate and exchange ideas directly with other mathematicians during his numerous travels, and greatly extend his fields of knowledge.

He is credited with the theories of outer measure, and prime ends, amongst other mathematical results.

The Greek authorities intend to create a museum honoring Karatheodoris in Komotini, a major town of the northeastern Greek region where his family came from.

More recently, on December 19, 2005 Israeli officials along with Israel' ambassador to Athens, Ram Aviram presented to the Greek foreign ministry with copies of 10 letters between Albert Einstein and Constantin Carathéodory [Karatheodoris] that suggest that the work of Carathéodory help shape some of Albert Einstein's theories. The letters were part of a long correspondence which lasted from 1916 to 1930. Aviram said that according to experts at the National Archives of Israel - custodians of the original letters - the mathematical side of Einstein's physics theory was partly substantiated through the work of Carathéodory. [1] [2]

See also

• Borel-Carathéodory theorem
• Carathéodory's theorem (disambiguation)
• Carathéodory-Jacobi-Lie theorem
• Carnot-Carathéodory manifold

Sources

1. Maria Georgiadou, Constantin Carathéodory: Mathematics and Politics in Turbulent Times, Springer Verlag, 2004. ISBN 3-540-44258-8.
2. C. Carathéodory, Untersuchungen ueber die Grundlagen der Thermodynamik, Math. Ann., 67 (1909) p. 355-386.

External links

• Web site dedicated to Carathéodory (in Greek)
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Constantin Carathéodory", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
• Constantin Carathéodory at the Mathematics Genealogy Project