Some mathematical news items

• May 17, 2022      On April 22, 2022 Gerrit van Dijk passed away. He was 82 years old. He was professor emeritus in mathematics at the University of Leiden. His research was in analysis on Lie groups, in particular for non-Riemannian symmetric spaces of rank one. During the late seventies and eighties of the previous century, while I was a researcher at CWI, Amsterdam, I collaborated a lot with Gerrit by joint advising of PhD students, the organization of a regular seminar Analysis on Lie groups and also an annual Lie groups workshop. Gerrit also invited me to teach some of his master courses while he was very occupied with administrative duties.
  See an in memoriam at the site of Leiden University.

• January 15, 2021      On December 21, 2020 Mogens Flensted-Jensen passed away. He was 78 years old. He was professor emeritus at the University of Copenhagen. Mogens worked in the area of Analysis on Lie groups. His most important paper in Ann. of Math. (2) 111 (1980), 253–311 gave a sufficient condition for a semisimple symmetric space G/H to have a discrete series.
  Mogens spent the academic year 1970-1971 as a graduate student at the Institut Mittag-Leffler in Djursholm, Sweden. There he was greatly influenced by lectures by Sigurdur Helgason. He also met there Tom Koornwinder, with whom he later published a few papers on Jacobi functions.
  See an extensive obiturary at the site of the Copenhagen math department. There is a shorter obituary in OP-SF NET, Volume 28, Number 1, item 4.

• October 15, 2019      On October 9, 2019 Richard (Dick) Askey passed away. He was 86 years old. See an obituary.
  Dick Askey was professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. By his publications and lectures, PhD students and postdocs, and by personal contacts he had an enormous impact on the field of orthogonal polynomials and special functions. To a large extent it is his merit that this field, that had become somewhat sterile in the sixties of the past century, became completely revitalized. His other great interest concerned the didactics of mathematics, from elementary school up to calculus teaching at American colleges.
  Dick Askey spent a sabbatixal at the Mathematical Centre (now CWI) in Amsterdam during the academic year 1969-1970. By his lectures and personal contacts during that year he had great influence on some young PhD students there, in particular Herman Bacinck, Nico Temme and Tom Koornwinder.
  The photo shows Dick Askey in Oberwolfach, 1983.

• October 17, 2011      On September 13, 2011 Erik G.F. Thomas passed away. He was 72 years old. He was professor emeritus in mathematics at the University of Groningen. His research was in analysis, in particular functional analysis and measure and integration, including analysis on Lie groups and the study of path integrals. MathSciNet lists 46 published papers by him. Erik Thomas obtained his PhD in 1969 at Université Paris-Sud XI Orsay. His PhD advisor was Laurent Schwartz. Read an in memoriam.

• July 26, 2008      On July 22, 2008 Anatoly Klimyk passed away. He was 69 years old. From 1989 to April 2008 he was the Head of Department of Mathematical Methods in Theoretical Physics, Institute of Theoretical Physics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kiev. Anatoly Klimyk was in particular well-known by his work on group theoretic methods for special functions. Notably, he wrote together with N. Ja. Vilenkin a four-volume monograph Representations of Lie groups and special functions which appeared at Kluwer, 1991-1995.
  Read a more detailed message about Anatoly Klimyk by Anatoly Nikitin.

  
  

• October 24, 2007
  A stamp celebrating the centennial of the thesis by L.E.J. Brouwer came out in the Netherlands today. During a meeting at the Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW) the first item was handed to prof. Dirk van Dalen.

  
  The formula on the stamp is produced by this latex code.

• February 28, 2006
  Herman van Rossum, emeritus professor of the University of Amsterdam, has died on February 25, 2006. He became 88 years old.
  During a period of 20 years Herman van Rossum was director of the Institute for Propaedeutical Mathematics at the University of Amsterdam. This institute, emphasizing good teaching of basic mathematics to students in other sciences, was founded by him. Later the institute changed its name into Institute for Interdisciplinary Mathematics.
  Herman van Rossum defended his PhD thesis A theory of orthogonal polynomials based on the Padé table at the University of Utrecht in 1953. Between 1955 and 1995 he published 26 research papers, mostly on orthogonal polynomials and Padé approximation. Seven of these papers were joint papers with Erik Hendriksen, who was inspired by Herman van Rossum to enter research in orthogonal polynomials and approximation theory.
  See a picture of Herman van Rossum taken in October 2005.

• January 15, 2006
  Vadim B. Kuznetsov (University of Leeds, UK) died suddenly and unexpectedly on 16 December 2005. He was an expert in the field of Integrable Systems. MathSciNet lists 45 publications of his, over the period 1987-2004. Among these there are 13 which have Primary/Secondary MSC number 33. He became best known in special functions by a series of papers together with E.K. Sklyanin on application of the technique of separation of variables in quantum integrable systems in order to obtain an integral transform mapping n-variable Macdonald (or Jack) polynomials to a product of n one-variable functions, and vice versa.

  Vadim Kuznetsov studied and graduated in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). In 1993 he came to Amsterdam for a two-year postdoc position with me. After further postdoc positions in Denmark and Canada he settled in Leeds, first in temporary positions obtained by successful grant applications, and eventually in a tenured position as a Reader in Applied Analysis.

  Vadim was always very kind and enthusiastic. He had 21 coauthors. He was very active in organizing meetings, of which two Proceedings edited by him have appeared. A third volume, the Proceedings of the Workshop on Jack, Hall-Littlewood and Macdonald polynomials (Edinburgh, 23-26 September 2003), coedited with Siddharta Sahi, has appeared in 2006 in the AMS series Contemporary Mathematics.
  Vadim is survived by his wife, Olga, and son, Simon.
  See a short obituary provided by the University of Leeds. There is a picture of Vadim lecturing during the Workshop on Special Functions, Representation Theory and Applications, Amsterdam, 25-27 August 2003.

• December 3, 2004
  Johannes (Joop) Boersma, emeritus professor of the Technical University Eindhoven, has died on November 29, 2004. He became almost 67 years old. He was active in applied analysis, including special functions and asymptotics. See the article Obituary: Johannes Boersma (1937–2004), a remarkable mathematician by H.K. Kuiken in J. Engrg. Math. 60 (2008), 1–16.

• April 1, 2003
  Adriaan C. Zaanen (prof. emeritus of University of Leiden, Netherlands) passed away on April 1, 2003. He was born on June 14, 1913. He was a mathematician of high reputation in analysis, in particular functional analysis and Riesz spaces. He wrote at least 6 books and many papers. See Nieuw Arch. Wisk. (4) 6 (1988), no. 1-2, 60-62 for a brief biography and curriculum vitae (in Dutch) of Zaanen on the occasion of his election as an honorary member of the Wiskundig Genootschap (Dutch Mathematical Society). See also the item on Zaanen (in Dutch) in the online Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederlandse Wiskundigen.

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