Menahem Max Schiffer (24 September 1911, Berlin – 11 November 1997)[1][2]) was a German-born American mathematician who worked in complex analysis, partial differential equations, and mathematical physics.[3]
On the basis of his prior mathematical publications, Schiffer received a master's degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1938, he received his doctorate under the supervision of Michael Fekete. [4] In his dissertation on Conformal representation and univalent functions[5] he introduced the "Schiffer variation", a method for handling geometric problems in complex analysis.
Schiffer married Fanya Rabinivics Schiffer in 1937.[3] His daughter Dinah S. Singer, is an experimental immunologist.[6]
Never losing his interest in mathematical physics, Schiffer also made important contributions to eigenvalue problems, to partial differential equations, and to the variational theory of “domain functionals” that arise in many classical boundary value problems. And he coauthored a book on general relativity. Schiffer was a prolific author over his entire career, with 135 publications from the 1930s to the 1990s, including four books and around forty different coauthors. He was also an outstanding mathematical stylist, always writing, by his own testimony, with the reader in mind. ... His lectures at Stanford and around the world ranged greatly in subject matter and were widely appreciated. ... At Stanford he often taught graduate courses in applied mathematics and mathematical physics. Students from all departments flocked to them, as did many faculty. Each lecture was a perfect set piece—no pauses, no slips, and no notes. In 1976 he was chosen as one of the first recipients of the Dean's Award for Teaching in the School of Humanities and Sciences.[5]
with Stefan Bergman: Kernel functions and elliptic differential equations in mathematical physics, Academic Press 1953[12]
with Donald Spencer: Functionals of finite Riemann Surfaces, Princeton 1954[13]
with Ronald Adler, Maurice Bazin: Introduction to General Relativity, McGraw Hill 1965 xvi+ 451 pp. Illus.[14]2nd edition. 1975; xiv+ 549 pp.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
^Schiffer, Menahem (1950). "Variational methods in the theory of conformal mapping"(PDF). In: Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A., August 30–September 6, 1950. Vol. 2. pp. 233–240.
^Boyer, R. H. (7 May 1965). "Review: Introduction to General Relativity by Ronald Adler, Maurice Bazin, and Menahem Schiffer". Science. 148 (3671): 808–809. doi:10.1126/science.148.3671.808.