Eberhard Hopf

Eberhard Frederich Ferdinand Hopf (April 4, 1902, in Salzburg, Austria-Hungary – July 24, 1983, in Bloomington, Indiana, USA) was a German mathematician and astronomer, one of the founding fathers of ergodic theory and a pioneer of bifurcation theory who also made significant contributions to the subjects of partial differential equations and integral equations, fluid dynamics, and differential geometry. The Hopf maximum principle is an early result of his that is one of the most important techniques in the theory of elliptic partial differential equations.

Biography Hopf was born in Salzburg, Austria-Hungary, but his scientific career was divided between Germany and the United States. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1926 and his Habilitation in mathematical astronomy from the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin in 1929.

In 1971, Hopf was the American Mathematical Society Gibbs Lecturer. In 1981, he received the Leroy P. Steele Prize from the American Mathematical Society for seminal contributions to research.

Major publications

A non-comprehensive selection of his work was published in 2002: