Antoni Zygmund

The University of Chicago

December 26, 1900 - May 30, 1992


Scientific Discipline: Mathematics
Membership Type:
Member (elected 1960)

Antoni Zygmund was best known for his studies of the Fourier series, which treated the representation of mathematical functions as sums of an infinite series of trigonometric functions (i.e. sine and cosine).  This became known as harmonic analysis, or a method for analyzing periodic functions.  Zygmund’s research allowed him to break down the complex functions of vibrating and oscillating objects into constituent components, and was essential for the development of spacecraft design, crystallography, and laser holography.  Along with his former student, Alberto Calderón, Zygmund created the Calderón-Zygmund operators.  These operators were important in partial differential equations. 

Zygmund received his Ph.D. from Warsaw University in 1923.  From his graduation until 1930, he taught mathematics at the Warsaw Polytechnical School while also completing a Rockefeller fellowship at Cambridge and Oxford Universities.  He then taught at Wilno University (which is now located in Lithuania as opposed to Poland) until 1939 when he fled the German invasion.  Upon his arrival in America, Zygmund taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Mount Holyoke College (respectively) before he became a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945.  Two years later, he accepted a full professorship at the University of Chicago where he remained for 45 years. Zygmund’s most notable recognition was in 1986 when he received America’s most coveted scientific award: the National Medal of Science.

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