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Peter Henrici (mathematician)

Swiss mathematician (1923–1987)

Peter Karl Henrici
Peter Henrici in 1982
Born	(1923-09-13)13 September 1923 Basel, Switzerland
Died	13 March 1987(1987-03-13) (aged 63) Zürich, Switzerland
Nationality	Swiss
Alma mater	ETH Zürich
Known for	Numerical analysis
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	University of California, Los Angeles; ETH Zürich; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Doctoral advisor	Eduard Stiefel
Doctoral students	Gilbert Strang, William B. Gragg

Peter Karl Henrici (13 September 1923 – 13 March 1987) was a Swiss mathematician best known for his contributions to the field of numerical analysis.

Life[edit]

Henrici was born in Basel and studied law for two years at University of Basel. After World War II he transferred to ETH Zürich where he received a diplomainelectrical engineering (1948) and a doctorateinmathematics with Eduard Stiefel as his advisor (1952).

Moving to the USA[edit]

In 1951 he moved to the United States and worked on a joint contract with American University and the National Bureau of Standards. Then, from 1956 to 1962, he taught at University of California, Los Angeles where he became a professor. In 1962 he returned to ETH Zürich as a professor, a position he kept for the rest of his life, though he also held a part-time appointment as William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1985.^[1][2]

Numerical Analyst[edit]

An internationally recognized numerical analyst, who published 11 books and more than 80 research papers, Henrici was also a gifted pianist and a highly regarded teacher.^[1] He was an editor of a number of scientific journals, including Numerische Mathematik and Zeitschrift für Angewandte Mathematik und Physik. In 1962, he was a speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians, and in 1978 he gave the SIAM John von Neumann Lecture.^[2]

Peter Henrici Prize[edit]

Every four years since 1999, the Peter Henrici Prize is awarded by ETH Zürich and SIAM for "original contributions to applied analysis and numerical analysis and/or for exposition appropriate for applied mathematics and scientific computing".^[3]

Publications[edit]

• Henrici, Peter (1962). Discrete variable methods in ordinary differential equations. Wiley.

• Henrici, Peter (1963). Error propagation for difference methods. SIAM series in applied mathematics. Wiley.

• Henrici, Peter (1964). Elements of numerical analysis. Wiley.

• Henrici, Peter (1974). Applied and computational complex analysis, Volume 1: Power series—integration—conformal mapping—location of zeros. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-37244-7.

• Henrici, Peter (1977). Applied and computational complex analysis, Volume 2: Special functions—integral transforms—asymptotics—continued fractions. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-01525-3.
• Henrici, Peter (1977). Computational Analysis with the HP-25 Pocket Calculator. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-02938-6.
• Henrici, Peter (1986). Applied and computational complex analysis, Volume 3: Discrete Fourier analysis—Cauchy integrals—construction of conformal maps—univalent functions. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-08703-3.

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Peter Henrici (mathematician).

• Peter Henrici at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F. (July 2008), "Peter Henrici", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews