Leonard Carlitz

Leonard Carlitz (December 26, 1907 – September 17, 1999) was an American mathematician. Carlitz supervised 44 doctorates at Duke University and published over 770 papers.

Chronology[]

• 1907 Born Philadelphia, PA, USA
• 1927 BA, University of Pennsylvania
• 1930 PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 1930 under Howard Mitchell, who had studied under Oswald Veblen at Princeton
• 1930–31 at Caltech with E. T. Bell
• 1931 married Clara Skaler
• 1931–32 at Cambridge with G. H. Hardy
• 1932 Joined the faculty of Duke University where he served for 45 years
• 1938 to 1973 Editorial Board Duke Mathematical Journal (Managing Editor from 1945.)
• 1939 Birth of son Michael
• 1940 Supervision of his first doctoral student E. F. Canaday, awarded 1940
• 1945 Birth of son Robert
• 1964 First James B. Duke Professor in Mathematics
• 1977 Supervised his 44th and last doctoral student, Jo Ann Lutz, awarded 1977
• 1977 Retired
• 1990 Death of wife Clara, after 59 years of marriage
• 1999 September 17 Died in Pittsburgh, PA

Mathematical work[]

• The Carlitz module is generalized by the Drinfeld module
• An identity regarding Bernoulli numbers
• Carlitz wrote about Bessel polynomials
• He introduced Al-Salam–Carlitz polynomials.
• Carlitz' identity for bicentric quadrilaterals
• He conjectured the Carlitz-Wan conjecture, later proved by Daqing Wan.

Publication[]

Leonard Carlitz published about 771 technical papers comprising approximately 7,000 pages. The effort to edit his collected works, undertaken originally by Professor John Brillhart, is ongoing.^[1][2]

References[]

^ Joel V. Brawley, John Brillhart and Henry W. Gould, "Recollections of Leonard Carlitz", Acta Arithmetica, Vol. 152(2012), No. 4, 361–372. ^ Joel V. Brawley, John Brillhart, and Henry W. Gould (editors), "The publications of Leonard Carlitz", Acta Arithmetica. Vol. 152(2012), No. 4, 373–405. Annotated Catalogue of Carlitz's 773 publications.

• Brawley, Joel V. (2000), "In memoriam: Leonard Carlitz (1907–1999)", Finite Fields and Their Applications, 6 (3): 203–206, doi:10.1006/ffta.2000.0276, ISSN 1071-5797, MR 1772617
• Brawley, Joel V. (1995), "Dedicated to Leonard Carlitz: the man and his work", Finite Fields and Their Applications, 1 (2): 135–151, doi:10.1006/ffta.1995.1011, ISSN 1071-5797, MR 1337739
• Hayes, David R. (2001), "Leonard Carlitz (1907–1999)" (PDF), Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 48 (11): 1322–1324, ISSN 0002-9920, MR 1870635
• Howard, F. T. (2000), "In memoriam—Leonard Carlitz", Fibonacci Quarterly, 38 (4): 316, ISSN 0015-0517, MR 1775253

External links[]

• Obituary at Duke's Math Newsletter
• Leonard Carlitz at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Leonard Carlitz", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews
• zbMATH.org author profile