Biography george mathematical polya
George Polya, 97, Dean of Mathematicians, Dies
George Polya, one of the most remarkable mathematicians of the 20th Century, who made fundamental contributions to a wide range of topics and to the theory of problem solving, died Saturday in Palo Alto. He was 97 years old and had suffered a stroke earlier this summer.
In addition to a prodigious lifetime output of more than 250 papers, Polya in 1945 wrote “How to Solve It,” which explains in non-technical terms how to think about invention, discovery, creativity and analysis. The book has been translated into 15 languages and has sold more than 1 million copies, making it one of the most widely circulated mathematics books in history.
A native of Hungary, Polya came to this country and to Stanford University in 1940. He retired from the university in 1953 but continued doing innovative mathematics well into his 90s, an extraordinary contribution. Conventional wisdom holds that important discoveries in mathematics are made by young people.
In addition, Polya devoted himself after retirement to mathematics education, pioneering the problem-solving approach to teaching math. In 1963, the Mathematical Assn. of America gave him its distinguished service award “for his constructive influence on mathematical education in the widest sense.”
“He has given a new dimension to problem-solving by emphasizing the organic building up of elementary steps into a complex proof, and conversely, the decomposition of mathematical invention into smaller steps,” the citation read. “Problem solving a la Polya serves not only to develop mathematical skill but also teaches constructive reasoning in general.”
Polya’s work on the strategy of innovation and discovery was based on the assumption that the ability to create can be taught using rules of thumb and know-how. He summarized his global approach to problem-solving as follows:
“First: you have to understand the problem.
“Second: find the connection between the data and th
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Budapest, Hungary
Palo Alto, California, USA
Biography
George Pólya's parents were Anna Deutsch and Jakab Pólya who were both Jewish. Anna was from a family who had lived for many generations in Buda, and she had been nineteen years old in 1872 when the towns of Buda, Obuda, and Pest had administratively merged to become the city of Budapest. Perhaps we should say a little about George Pólya's names, for the situation is not quite as it appears. In fact, although Jakab Pólya had the name "Pólya" when his son György (or George as he was later known) was born, he had only called himself Pólya for the five preceding years. Before that his name had been Jakab Pollák but, in order to understand why Jakab Pollák changed his name to Pólya, we need to look at both his career and at a little Hungarian history.Jakab was trained as a lawyer, ran his own law firm which failed, and then worked for the international insurance company Assicurazioni Generali of Trieste. However what he really wanted was a university post in which he could conduct research into the subjects which really interested him, namely economics and statistics. After 1867 Hungary had gained full internal independence within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the political philosophy of the country was to move towards a Hungarian state that was both Magyar in spirit, and in its institutions. What better way for Jakab Pollák to improve his chances of a university post than to change his name from a Jewish sounding one to one which sounded really Hungarian. He did just that in 1882 and whether it contributed to his success in getting an appointment as a Privatdozent at the University of Budapest, one cannot say but he received such a post shortly before he died in his early fifties when George was ten years old.
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George Pólya
1 George Pólya
American mathematician, Born: György Pólya in Budapest, Hungary in 1887, (d. 1985 in Palo Alto, USA)
“His first job was to tutor the young son, Gregor, of a Hungarian baron. Gregor struggled due to his lack of problem solving skills.” Thus, according to Long ([1]), Polya insisted that the skill of “solving problems was not an inborn quality but, something that could be taught”.
In 1940, George Polya and his wife, Stella, (the only daughter of Swiss Dr. Weber, in Zurich) moved to the United States because of their justified fear of Nazism in Germany ([1]).
He taught at first, at Brown University, and then he moved permanently with his wife to Stanford University. Became Professor Emeritus at Stanford in 1953. He also taught many classes to elementary and secondary classroom teachers, inspiring them how to motivate and teach their students how to solve problems. His research was in several mathematical areas: functional analysis, probability, number theory, algebra, combinatorics and geometry. Recieved The Mathematical Association of America Award ”for articles of expository excellence published in the College Mathematics Journal”. He published in 1945 the book “How to Solve It” that sold in more than one million copies in 18 languages. Although an appropriate strategy can be learned by solving many problems, it is learned much faster if several, similar examples are worked out first with a teacher on an one–on–one basis. Here are some of the highlights of his simple strategies for problem solving:
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Devise a Plan on how to approach the Problem; such a plan may include one or several of the following:
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Make a first guess to begin with, and then verify the answer
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Consider special cases that are much easier to solve
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Use direct reasoning but double-check your results
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Carry out the Plan, as modified by partial solutions
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If plan doesn’t work, make an im
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George Pólya
Hungarian mathematician (1887–1985)
The native form of this personal name is Pólya György. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.
George Pólya (; Hungarian: Pólya György, pronounced[ˈpoːjɒˈɟørɟ]; December 13, 1887 – September 7, 1985) was a Hungarian-American mathematician. He was a professor of mathematics from 1914 to 1940 at ETH Zürich and from 1940 to 1953 at Stanford University. He made fundamental contributions to combinatorics, number theory, numerical analysis and probability theory. He is also noted for his work in heuristics and mathematics education. He has been described as one of The Martians, an informal category which included one of his most famous students at ETH Zurich, John von Neumann.
Life and works
Pólya was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, to Anna Deutsch and Jakab Pólya, Hungarian Jews who had converted to Christianity in 1886. Although his parents were religious and he was baptized into the Catholic Church upon birth, George eventually grew up to be an agnostic. He received a PhD under Lipót Fejér in 1912, at Eötvös Loránd University. He was a professor of mathematics from 1914 to 1940 at ETH Zürich in Switzerland and from 1940 to 1953 at Stanford University. He remained a professor emeritus at Stanford for the rest of his career, working on a range of mathematical topics, including series, number theory, mathematical analysis, geometry, algebra, combinatorics, and probability. He was invited to speak at the ICM at Bologna in 1928, at Oslo in 1936 and at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1950.
On September 7, 1985, Pólya died in Palo Alto, California, United States due to complications of a stroke he suffered during that summer.
Heuristics
Early in his career, Pólya wrote with Gábor Szegő two influential problem books, Problems and Theorems in Analysis (I: Series
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