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Romanian mathematician
Dimitrie Pompeiu, famous mathematician, one of the creators of the modern school of mathematics in Bucharest, was a scientist with multilateral concerns and interests.
Born in the village Dimăcheni, Botosani County, in 1873, son of a primary school teacher, he was a child with great difficulties due to division of his family, as the father abandoned early the family.
Pompeiu follows the Dorohoi gymnasium, due to the help given by an uncle. He becomes a primary school teacher, graduating the Normal School in Bucharest as a scholarship student. As a young graduate, he occupies, in 1889, teacher positions, first at Galaţi, then at Ploiesti, exercising his profession with passion.
But he was always attracted to scientific research, so that becomes a member of society "Friends of mathematical sciences", under the leadership of Constantine Gogu, and publishes his first works.
Pompeiu goes to Paris (1898), where he gets the baccalaureate degree (1899), then the license in mathematics (1903), and, only two years latter (1905), he obtains his Ph.D. degree in mathematics with a thesis on the continuity of the complex variable functions. The great French mathematician Paul Monti described his thesis work as "famous in the history of mathematics".
Due to this work, the young researcher, who was then only 32 years, opens new paths in important chapters of mathematics. His discoveries in the theory of functions provoked controversies, but it were eventually brilliantly confirmed. Starting from these results, he built a class of functions that bears his name, "Pompeiu functions".
The importance of his mathematical discoveries, that have enriched science with significant results, remains significant even with age. Mathematician S. Stoilow see him that over the decades "sowed. . . ideas and images, original and suggestive, ingenious methods and elegant formulas".
The work of D. Pompeiu, prolific mathematical genius, concerns various sectors of mathematics, such as: set theory (he introduced the notion of distance between two closed sets), function theory, potential theory, rational mechanics, number theory, geometry.
He introduced, in 1912, the fundamental concept of areolar derivative, which is proved to be a basic concept of mathematical analysis; it is successfully used, both by Romanian and foreign mathematicians and consists a basis for further important studies. He established an entire class of derivatives known as "derivatives Pompeiu".
His activity was closely related to higher education, as a professor at the University of Iasi, Cluj and Bucharest (1905-1940), the Polytechnic of Bucharest, Pompeiu was several times invited as professor at Universities of Paris and Poitiers. He was a member of the Romanian Academy (1934 and 1948), president of several international congresses of mathematics.
Considered, rightfully, as one of the creators of the modern school of mathematics in Romania, Pompeiu was characterized by another great Romanian mathematician, Octav Onicescu: "Pompeiu did math all his life, with his own tools and his own vision. His work and lectures, especially in his conversations with friends, it was dominant the sense of unique and original. Each subject of Pompeiu’s conversation gave his partner the feeling that participating in an act of creative science. To create such a joy, the obligation of thinking after the great rules of science, was the main mission reached by Pompeiu”.
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variant spelling:
Pompeiu, Dimitrie
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Curriculum vitae
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* 1873
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Dimanesti Botosani
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born
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1903
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Paris
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1905
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Paris
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1905 - 1940
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Iasi, Cluj, Bucuresti
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† 1954
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Bucuresti
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died
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