Aurel Wintner papers

Collection

Identifier: MS-0281

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

This collection documents Aurel Wintner's professional life as a mathematician. The collection consists largely of Wintner's writings and reprints of his colleagues' work. There are some lecture notes and outlines from courses he taught at Hopkins and some professional correspondence. There is one box of papers dealing with Wintner's years as editor of the American Journal of Mathematics. The material spans 1848 to 1961.

Dates

Creation: 1848 - 1961

Creator

Wintner, Aurel, 1903-1958 (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is housed off-site and requires 48-hours' notice for retrieval. Please contact Special Collections for more information.

This collection is open for use.

Series 3: American Journal of Mathematics was formerly closed for 20 years; that restriction expired in 2010.

Conditions Governing Use

Single copies may be made for research purposes. Researchers are responsible for determining any copyright questions. It is not necessary to seek our permission as the owner of the physical work to publish or otherwise use public domain materials that we have made available for use, unless Johns Hopkins University holds the copyright.

Biographical Note

Aurel Wintner was born in Budapest April 8, 1903. He studied at the University of Budapest from 1920 to 1924, but financial reverses forced him to withdraw before completing his degree.In 1927, Wintner enrolled at the University of Leipzig where he received his doctorate in 1929. While in Leipzig Wintner served as an editorial assistant to Lichtenstein for the Mathematische Zeitschrift and the Jahrbuch ueber die Fortschritte der Mathematik.

Wintner held a postdoctoral fellowship for the year 1929- 1930 studying in Rome with T. Levi-Civita and at the observatory in Copenhagen with Elis Stroemgren. Wintner joined the faculty of The Johns Hopkins University in 1930 and remained there until his death in 1958. During the year 1937-1938 Wintner was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and worked with G.D. Birkhoff at Harvard. In 1941 Wintner was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to work with Norbert Wiener. Their planned book was delayed by Wiener's war work.

Wintner concentrated on almost periodic functions and/or distribution functions for most of the time between 1930 and 1945. During this time Wintner completed his book Analytical Foundations of Celestial Mechanics. The war interrupted many of Wintner's collaborations, and during this time he completed Eratosthenian Averages, Theory of Measure in Arithmetical Semi-Groups, and An Arithmetical Approach to Ordinary Fourier Series. From 1946 until his death Wintner worked on the theory of ordinary differential equations and on differential geometry.

Aurel Wintner died in 1958.

Extent

28.34 Cubic Feet (21 record center cartons, 5 letter size document boxes, 1 letter half-size document box)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Aurel Friedrich Wintner (8 April 1903 – 15 January 1958) was a mathematician noted for his research in mathematical analysis, number theory, differential equations and probability theory. The collection consists largely of Wintner's writings and reprints of his colleagues' work with materials spanning 1848 to 1961.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Aurel Wintner's papers remained in his home after his death in 1958. At that time some of Wintner's files from the Johns Hopkins University Department of Mathematics were transferred to his home. When Mrs. Wintner died in April 1990, their son Claude Wintner donated Aurel Wintner's papers to The Johns Hopkins University along with Wintner's working library.