Jovan Karamata
Jovan Karamata (
Serbian Cyrillic: Јован Карамата) (
1902–
1967) was one of the greatest
Serbian
mathematicians of the
20th century.
Jovan Karamata was born in
Zagreb on
February 1,
1902 to a
Serbian-
Aromanian father and a Serbian mother. His family descends from a merchant family from the city of
Zemun in
Serbia. His family's business affairs on the borders of the
Austro-Hungarian and
Ottoman empires were very well known. In
1914, he finished most of his primary school in Zemun but because of constant warfare on the borderlands, Karamata's father sent him, together with his brothers and his sister, to
Switzerland for their own safety. In
Lausanne,
1920, he finished primary school oriented towards mathematics and sciences. In the same year he enrolled at the Engineering faculty of
Belgrade University and, after several years moved to the Philosophy and Mathematicians sector, where he graduated in
1925.
He spent the years
1927-
1928 in
Paris, as a fellow of the
Rockefeller Foundation, and in
1928 he became Assistant for Mathematics at the Faculty of Philosophy of Belgrade University. In
1930 he became Assistant Professor, in
1937 Associate Professor and, after the end of
World War II, in
1950 he became Full Professor. In
1951 he was elected Full Professor at the
University of Geneva. In
1933 he became a member of
Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts, Czech Royal Society in
1936, and Serbian Royal Academy in
1939 as well as a fellow of Serbian Academy of Sciences in
1948. He was one of the founders of the
Mathematical Institute of the
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in
1946.
Karamata was member of the
Swiss,
French and
German mathematical societies, the French Association for the Development of Science, and the primary editor of the journal
L'Enseignement Mathématique in
Geneva. He also taught at the
University of Novi Sad.
In
1931 he married Emilija Nikolajevic, who gave birth to their two sons and a daughter. His wife died in
1959. After a long illness, Jovan Karamata died on
August 14,
1967 in Geneva. His ashes rest in his native town of Zemun.
Jovan Karamata was one of the most prolific mathematicians of his time. He published 122 scientific papers, 15 monographs and text-books as well as 7 professional-pedagogical papers. Karamata is best known for his work on
mathematical analysis. He created the theory of regularly-varying sequences and theorems of
Tauberian type: today described as
Karamata's Tauberian theorems. Karamata also added to numerous other theorems, including the
Weierstrass theorem,
Schmidt theorem, and
Littlewood's theorem. These works, as well as those related to slowly varying functions,
Mercer's theorems, inequalities, trigonometrical integrals,
Froullani's integrals, and others have frequently been quoted in various papers. In Serbia, Karamata is immortalized in the "Karamata's (Yugoslav) school of mathematics". Today, Karamata is the most frequently cited Serbian mathematican. He is the developer and co-developer of dozens of mathematicial theorems and has a lasting influence in 20th century mathematics.
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Mathematical analysis*
Tauberian theorem*
Lah number*
Stirling number*
John Edensor Littlewood*
Mihailo PetrovicExternal links
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Jovan Karamata Biography and Analysis of Work*
Jovan Karamata Biography and AchievementsFurther reading
#N.H. Bingham, C.M. Goldie, J.L. Teugels, Regular Variation, Encyclopedia of Mathematics and its Applications, vol. 27, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987.#J.L. Geluk, L. de Haan, Regular Variation Extensions and Tauberian Theorems, CWI Tract 40, Amsterdam, 1987.#Maric V, Radasin Z,
Regularly Varying Functions in Asymptotic Analysis#Nikolic A,
About two famous results of Jovan Karamata, Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences#Nikolic A,
Jovan Karamata (1902-1967), Lives and work of the Serbian scietists, SANU, Biographies and bibliographies, Book 5#Tomic M,
Academician Jovan Karamata, on occasion of his death, SANU, Vol CDXXIII, t. 37, Belgrade, 1968 (in Serbian)#Tomic M,
Jovan Karamata (1902-1967), L'Enseignement Mathématique#Tomic M, Aljancic S,
Remembering Karamata, Publications de l'Institut Mathématique
