Stefan Bergman

Stefan Bergman (5 May 1895 – 6 June 1977) was a Poland-born American mathematician whose primary work was in complex analysis. He is known for the kernel function he discovered in 1922 at University of Berlin. This function is now known as the Bergman kernel. Bergman taught for many years at Stanford University.

Biography Born in Częstochowa, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, to a German Jewish family, Bergman received his Ph.D. at University of Berlin in 1921, for a dissertation on Fourier analysis. His advisor, Richard von Mises, had a strong influence on him, lasting for the rest of his career. In 1933, Bergman was forced to leave his post at the Berlin University because he was a Jew. He fled first to Russia, where he stayed until 1939, and then to Paris. In 1939, he emigrated to the United States, where he would remain for the rest of life. He was a professor at Stanford University from 1952 until his retirement in 1972. He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1950 in Cambridge, Massachusetts and in 1962 in Stockholm (On meromorphic functions of several complex variables). He died in Palo Alto, California, aged 82.

Bergman Prize The Stefan Bergman Prize in mathematics was initiated by Bergman's wife in her will, in memory of her husband's work. The American Mathematical Society supports the prize and selects the committee of judges. The prize is awarded for: . The Kernel Function and Conformal Mapping, American Mathematical Society 1950, 2nd edn. 1970 with Menahem Max Schiffer: Kernel Functions and elliptic differential equations in mathematical physics, Academic Press 1953 with John G. Herriot: Application of the method of the kernel function for solving boundary value problems, Numerische Mathematik 3, 1961 Integral operators in the theory of linear partial differential equations, Springer 1961, 2nd edn. 1969