James Allister Jenkins

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James Allister Jenkins (born 23 September 1923, Toronto, Ontario;[1] – 16 September 2012, Lock Haven, Pennsylvania) was a Canadian–American mathematician, specializing in complex analysis.

Education and career[]

Jenkins moved from Toronto to the United States to attend graduate school in mathematics at Harvard University.[2] There he received his PhD in 1948 with thesis Some Problems in Complex Analysis under the supervision with Lars Ahlfors.[3] After some time at Harvard as a postdoc, Jenkins taught and did research at Johns Hopkins University for several years. He became, by 1955, a professor at the University of Notre Dame and, by 1963, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, where he eventually retired as professor emeritus. He spent several sabbaticals at the Institute for Advanced Study.[4]

Jenkins was the author or coauthor of over 137 research publications in complex analysis.[5] He coauthored 6 papers with Marston Morse.[6][7][8][9][10][11]

In their 1953 paper in Fundamenta Mathematicae, "Morse and Jenkins solve the difficult problem of showing that on a simply connected Riemann surface every pseudo-harmonic function has a pseudo-conjugate. Thus in particular they show that on such a surface any pseudo-harmonic function can be made harmonic by a change of the conformai structure."[12]

Recall here that pseudo-harmonic means "harmonic after a suitable homeomorphism" so that the topological properties of harmonic functions automatically carry over to pseudo-harmonic ones. In this context V is a pseudo-conjugate to U if there is a homeomorphism of the domain of these functions such that (U + iV) is analytic. The work of Morse and Jenkins extending over the early fifties is devoted to exploring the "order" in the "complexity" mentioned in their "Fundamenta" paper. [12]

Morse and Jenkins basically settled "the simply connected case, where they extended and completed earlier work of Kaplan, Boothby[13] and others ..."[12] and then in their 1953 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences they discussed the same problems on doubly connected surfaces. "In particular they there give a very complete analysis of the structure of the level sets of a pseudo-harmonic function."[12]

In 1962 Jenkins was an Invited Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Stockholm.[14]

Selected publications[]

Articles[]

Books[]

References[]

  1. ^ "James A. Jenkins (1923–2012)". Journal of Mathematical Sciences. 200 (5): 519–520. 2014. doi:10.1007/s10958-014-1940-x. S2CID 189872702. Journal of Mathematical Sciences (August 2014, Volume 200, S. 519–520)
  2. ^ "Obituary. Dr. James A. Jenkins". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. September 20, 2012.
  3. ^ James Allister Jenkins at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. ^ "James A. Jenkins". Scholars, Institute for Advanced Study.
  5. ^ "Jim Jenkins (1923–2012)". Washington University in St. Louis.
  6. ^ Contour equivalent pseudoharmonic functions and pseudoconjugates, by M. Morse with J. Jenkins, Amer. J. Math. 74 (1952), 23-51 doi:10.2307/2372067
  7. ^ Topological methods on Riemann surfaces. Pseudoharmonic junctions, by M. Morse with J. Jenkins, Ann. of Math. Studies, no. 30, Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, N. J., 1953, pp. 111-139
  8. ^ The existence of pseudoconjugates on Riemann surfaces, by M. Morse with J. Jenkins, Fund. Math. 39 (1953), 269-287
  9. ^ Conjugate nets, conformai structure, and interior transformations on open Riemann surfaces, by M. Morse with J. Jenkins, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 39 (1953), 1261-126 doi:10.1073/pnas.39.12.1261
  10. ^ Conjugate nets on an open Riemann surface, by M. Morse with J. Jenkins, Proc. Univ. Michigan Conf., June 1953
  11. ^ Curve families F* locally the level curves of a pseudoharmonic function, by M. Morse with J. Jenkins, Acta Math. 91 (1954), 42 pp. doi:10.1007/BF02393423
  12. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Bott, Raoul (1980). "Marston Morse and his mathematical works". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 3 (3): 907–951. doi:10.1090/S0273-0979-1980-14824-7. (See p. 938)
  13. ^ "Obituary: William M. Boothby, professor emeritus of mathematics, 102". The Source, Washington University in St. Louis. April 29, 2021.
  14. ^ Jenkins, James A. (1962). On normalization in the general coefficient theorem. Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians Stockholm. 1. pp. 347–350.
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