Đuro Kurepa

Đuro Kurepa (Serbian Cyrillic: Ђуро Курепа, ; 16 August 1907 – 2 November 1993) was a Yugoslav and Serbian mathematician, university professor and academic. and over 1,000 scientific reviews. He lectured at universities across Europe, as well as those in Canada, Cuba, Iraq, Israel, and the United States, and was quoted saying "I lectured at almost each of [the] nineteen universities of [the former] Yugoslavia..." family. In English, his name was transliterated as Djuro Kurepa while in French he is often attributed as Georges Kurepa. Kurepa was the youngest of Rade and Anđelija Kurepa's fourteen children. His nephew was the mathematician Svetozar Kurepa.

He began his schooling in Majske Poljane, continued his education in Glina, and graduated from high school in Križevci. and Columbia University in New York City, New York.

In 1965, Kurepa shifted to the University of Belgrade, where he focused on the mathematical fields of logic and set theory. Kurepa was a member of several organizations, including the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts. He was also the founder and president of the Society of Mathematicians and Physicists of Croatia, the founder and chief editor of the journal Mathematica Balkanica, and the president of the Yugoslav National Committee for Mathematics, the Balkan Mathematical Society, and the Union of Yugoslav Societies of Mathematicians, Physicisists and Astronomers. He received the AVNOJ Award in 1976, and retired from the University of Belgrade in 1977.

Death and legacy On 1 November 1993, Kurepa was robbed and beaten after retrieving his pension from a bank. He was then hidden from view under a set of stairs. He succumbed to his injuries on 2 November 1993 in a Belgrade emergency ward. He is interred in the Alley of Distinguished Citizens in the Belgrade New Cemetery.

As a mathematician, he is known especially for his works on set theory and general topology.

Kurepa influenced set theory in several ways, including lending his name to the Kurepa tree. According to Kajetan Šeper, Kurepa's colleague from the University of Zagreb: Professor Kurepa was not only the professional mathematician and teacher, but he was a scientist, philosopher, and humanist as well, in the true sense of these words. He was the founder and pioneer in mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics in Croatia, and modern mathematical theories in Croatia and Yugoslavia. Generally speaking, he was the catalyzer, the initiator, and the bearer of mathematical science.

According to the Mathematics Genealogy Project, Kurepa supervised 27 students, including analytic number theorist Aleksandar Ivić, set theorist Stevo Todorčević and topologist Ljubisa D.R. Kocinac.

Awards

AVNOJ award, 1976 Bernard Bolzano Charter, Prague, 1981

Teorija skupova, Belgrade, 1951 ŠTO SU SKUPOVI I KAKVA IM JE ULOGA, Zagreb, 1960 Viša algebra - knjiga prva, Belgrade, 1969 Viša algebra - knjiga druga, Belgrade, 1969 Selected Papers of Đuro Kurepa, Belgrade, 1996–12

Scientific works

SUR LES ENSEMBLES ORDONNES DENOMBRABLES, Zagreb, 1948 O REALNIM FUNKCIJAMA U OBITELjI SKUPOVA RACIONALNIH BROJEVA, Zagreb, 1953 On universal ramified sets, Zagreb, 1963 Monotone mappings between some kinds of ordered sets, Zagreb, 1964 Publikovani naučni radovi Đura Kurepe 1961 - 1976, Belgrade, 2012