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Polish Mathematician LVOV MATHEMATICAL SCHOOL IN THE PERIOD 1915{45 AS SEEN TODAY BANACH CENTER PUBLICATIONS, VOLUME 87 INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICS POLISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES WARSZAWA 2009 WLADYS LAW ORLICZ (1903{1990) { POLISH MATHEMATICIAN LECH MALIGRANDA Department of Mathematics Lule˚aUniversity of Technology SE-971 87 Lule˚a,Sweden E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. This is a brief biography of the Polish mathematician W ladyslaw Orlicz (mostly known for Orlicz spaces), one of the members of the famous Lw´owSchool of Mathematics (Polish School of Analysis in Lw´ow)who after World War II organized the Pozna´nSchool of Mathematics. This biography also includes his scientific achievements and many official scientific activities (honors and awards, membership in various scientific societies and editorial boards). There is a special section about Orlicz's connection to China and Chinese mathematicians. W ladys law Roman Orlicz was born on 24 May 1903 in Okocim, a village in the district of Brzesko, province of Cracow (it was at that time in Galicia in Austria-Hungary 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: Primary 01A72; Secondary 46-03. A clarification on the use of Lw´ow is in order. When, after almost 150 years of subjugation under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Poland reemerged in 1918 as an independent state at the conclusion of World War I, the city was called Lw´ow,and the name dates back at least to the thirteenth century. It was a Polish city in the period 1387{1772 since Galicia was ruled by Poland and in the period 1772{1918 by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Eastern Poland, including Lw´ow,was occupied at the onset of the World War II by the Soviets in 1939 per the terms of their alliance with the Nazis. After German's broke of the non-agression pact with the Soviets, the Nazis occupied Lw´owin 1941. The Soviets reoccupied Lw´owin 1944, and after the war it was annexed by the Soviet empire. From 1991 Lw´owbelongs to the independent state of Ukraine. The name Lvov is the English transliteration of the Russian name of Lw´ow,and one reason it is favored is because it appears in standard English and French dictionaries, and its pronunciation is very close to that of Lw´ow.The city is sometimes written as Lviv or L'viv, which are transliterations from the Ukrainian alphabet and are evidently closer to the Ukrainian name than Lvov. When Lw´owwas a part of Austria-Hungary and, briefly, Germany, it was called Lemberg. The Latin name was Leopolis. Lw´owis the preference of most Poles and I will use the original Polish version. The paper is in final form and no version of it will be published elsewhere. The paper was translated into Chinese by Yuwen Wang and Shujan Shjshi and published (without photos) in Mathematical Translations 26 (2007), no. 2, 126{132. DOI: 10.4064/bc87-0-5 [65] c Instytut Matematyczny PAN, 2009 66 L. MALIGRANDA and now is in Poland). His parents, Franciszek (1868{1907) and Maria n´eeRossknecht (1872{1952), had five sons: Kazimierz (1899{1945), Tadeusz (1900{1988), W ladys law (1903{1990), Zbigniew (1905{1920) and Micha l (1906{1978). His father died when he was only four years old. In 1919 Orlicz's family moved to Lw´ow,where he completed his secondary education and then studied, firstly at the Technical University and after one year he studied math- ematics at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lw´owhaving Stefan Banach, Hugo Steinhaus and AntoniLomnicki as teachers. From 1922 to 1929 he worked as a teaching assistant at the Department of Mathe- matics of Jan Kazimierz University in Lw´ow.In 1928 he wrote his doctoral thesis \Some problems in the theory of orthogonal series" under the supervision of Hugo Steinhaus but his formal supervisor was Eustachy Zyli´nski.In_ the same year he married Zofia Krzysik (born: 26 September 1898, Foˇca,Bosnia { died: 5 November 1999, Pozna´n).In the late twenties and early thirties Orlicz worked as a teacher in private secondary schools and in a military school. Orlicz spent two years 1929 and 1930 at the G¨ottingenUniversity, an excellent German academic center, on a scholarship in theoreti- cal physics not in mathematics. During his stay in G¨ottingenhe started his collaboration with Zygmunt Wilhelm Birnbaum, also from Lw´ow. They published two papers in Studia Mathe- matica in 1930 and 1931. Their results became a starting point for Orlicz to consider and in- vestigate, in 1932 and 1936, function spaces more general than Lp spaces which later on be- came known as Orlicz spaces. It should be emphasized clearly that from the functional analysis point of view (that is, as Photo 1. G¨ottingen1929 function spaces) Orlicz spaces appeared for the first time in 1932 in Orlicz's paper: Uber¨ eine gewisse Klasse von R¨aumenvom Typus B, Bull. Int. Acad. Polon. Sci. A 1932, No. 8/9, 207{220 with an additional condition on the function (the so called ∆2-condition for large u), and in full generality (that is, without the ∆2-condition) in 1936. This was the reason why the term Orlicz spaces appeared in the papers by M. Morse and W. Transue (1950), and by A. C. Zaanen (1952). Orlicz spaces also appeared in the book by Zaanen in 1953. In the years 1931{1937 Orlicz worked at the Lw´owTechnical University. In 1934 he was granted the \habilitation" (veniam legendi) for a thesis \Investigations of orthogonal systems". Working in Lw´owOrlicz participated in the famous meetings at the Scottish Caf´e (Kawiarnia Szkocka) where Polish mathematicians: Stefan Banach (1892{1945), Hugo Steinhaus (1887{1972), Stanis law Mazur (1905{1981), Juliusz Pawel Schauder (1899{ 1943), Stanislaw Ulam (1909{1984), Stefan Kaczmarz (1895{1939), Marek Kac (1909{ WLADYS LAW ORLICZ (1903{1990) { POLISH MATHEMATICIAN 67 1985) and others: Herman Auerbach (1901{1942), Zygmunt Wilhelm Birnbaum (1903{ 2000), Maks (Meier) Eidelheit (1910{1943), Antoni MarianLomnicki (1881{1941), W la- dyslaw Nikliborc (1899{1948), Stanis law Ruziewicz (1889{1941), J´ozefSchreier (1908{ 1943), Ludwik Sternbach (1905{1942) and W lodzimierz Sto_zek(1883{1941) had math- ematical meetings. In these meetings also participated mathematicians from Warsaw: Karol Borsuk (1905{1982), Samuel Eilenberg (1913{1998), Kazimierz Kuratowski (1896{ 1980), Bronis law Knaster (1893{1980), Edward Szpilrajn-Marczewski (1907{1976), Sta- nislaw Saks (1897{1942), Wac law Sierpi´nski(1882{1969) and Alfred Tarski (1902{1983) who were discussing mathematics. They all talked about mathematical problems and looked for their solutions. The group gained international recognition and was later on named as the Lw´owSchool of Mathematics. A collection of 193 mathematical problems from meetings at the Scottish Caf´eappeared later on as the Scottish Book. Orlicz is the au- thor or co-author of 14 problems in the book (R. D. Mauldin edited \The Scottish Book, Mathematics from the Scottish Caf´e ", Birk- h¨auser1981, which contains problems and com- mentaries written by specialists). In 1968 when presenting the mathematical output of H. Steinhaus (in an article published in Wiadom. Mat. in 1969), Orlicz wrote In Lw´owunder the leadership of our dear masters Banach and Steinhaus we were prac- ticing intricacies of mathematics. In 1937 Orlicz became professor at Pozna´n Photo 2. W ladys law Orlicz and his University (now Adam Mickiewicz University) wife Zofia (≈ 1939) and spent the Second World War in Lw´ow.He was a professor at the State University of Iwan Franko from January 1940 to June 1941 and from August 1944 to February 1945. He also taught at the school of commerce and handicrafts, and lectured at forestry courses. In March 1945 Orlicz went back to Poland and from May 1945 he returned to University of Pozna´n.In July 1948 Orlicz was promoted to an ordinary professor. Let us say something about Orlicz's connection to China and Chinese mathemati- cians. From 9 October 1958 W ladys law Orlicz and Aleksander Pe lczy´nskivisited, for two months, the Mathematical Institute of Academia Sinica, Peking (Beijing). Orlicz deliv- ered, in German language, a series of lectures on selected topics of functional analysis and A. Pelczy´nskihad exercises. This was in the period 15 October{17 November 1958 and after that they visited other cities in China: Nanjing (17{20 Nov.), Shanghai (21{25 Nov.), Hangzhou (26{28 Nov.), Guangzhou (Canton; 29 Nov.{2 Dec.), Wuhan (Hankou; 3{4 Dec.) and then they went to Peking (5{9 Dec.) with their return to Poland on 9 Dec. 1958. 68 L. MALIGRANDA Photo 3. Orlicz's caricature from 1946 Photo 4. Pozna´n1957. Antoni Zygmund and W ladys law Orlicz In several letters, to his wife Zofia, Orlicz wrote much about China in 1958. For example, some parts of his four letters are presented below: { 10 Oct. 1958 (Friday): I am writing a few words, already from Peking, from hotel \Peking" in which we are living. We started from Warsaw at 5 p.m. to Moscow. At the airport in Warsaw there was a mess, they gave us wrong luggage cards and an employee serving us was ignorant. Flight was quiet with a nice Moscow view at landing. Airport in Moscow: a mess, in comparison with which Warsaw was nothing. At 11 p.m. we started from Moscow and, after two stops, at 4 p.m. on Thursday we arrived in Peking. The world got smaller. After all welcomes and a supper at 9 p.m. we went to bed. { 20 Oct. 1958: These first 10 days of a stay are tightly filled with sightseeings of different monuments in the city (palaces, parks) and outside the city (the Great Wall of China, various buddhist temples).
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