Lowell Schoenfeld

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Lowell Schoenfeld
Born(1920-04-01)April 1, 1920
DiedFebruary 6, 2002(2002-02-06) (aged 81)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Pennsylvania
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
Thesis A Transformation Formula in the Theory of Partitions  (1944)
Doctoral advisorHans Rademacher
Doctoral studentsSamuel Lawn

Lowell Schoenfeld (April 1, 1920 – February 6, 2002) was an American mathematician known for his work in analytic number theory.

Career[edit]

Schoenfeld received his Ph.D. in 1944 from University of Pennsylvania under the direction of Hans Rademacher.

In 1953, as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he married (as his second wife) associate professor Josephine M. Mitchell, causing the university to fire her from her tenured position under its anti-nepotism rules while allowing him to keep his more junior tenure-track job. They both resigned in protest, and after several short-term positions they were both able to obtain faculty positions at Pennsylvania State University in 1958.[1] They were both promoted to full professor in 1961, and moved to the University at Buffalo in 1968.[2]

Contributions[edit]

Schoenfeld is known for obtaining the following results in 1976, assuming the Riemann hypothesis:

for all x ≥ 2657, based on the prime-counting function π(x) and the logarithmic integral function li(x), and

for all x ≥ 73.2, based on the second Chebyshev function ψ(x).[3]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Rossiter, Margaret W. (1995), Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action, 1940–1972, Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 125–126, ISBN 9780801857119
  2. ^ "Josephine M. Mitchell, UB Math Professor", Buffalo News, December 31, 2000
  3. ^ ——— (1976), "Sharper Bounds for the Chebyshev Functions θ(x) and ψ(x). II", Mathematics of Computation, 30 (134): 337–360, doi:10.2307/2005976, JSTOR 2005976.

External links[edit]