Lars Hörmander

Lars Valter Hörmander (24 January 1931 – 25

November 2012) was a Swedish mathematician who Lars Hörmander
has been called "the foremost contributor to the
modern theory of linear partial differential equations".
[1] Hörmander was awarded the Fields Medal in 1962

and the Wolf Prize in 1988. In 2006 he was awarded

the Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition for his
four-volume textbook Analysis of Linear Partial
Differential Operators, which is considered a
foundational work on the subject.[2]

Hörmander completed his Ph.D. in 1955 at Lund

University. Hörmander then worked at Stockholm
University, at Stanford University, and at the Institute
for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He
Hörmander in 1969
returned to Lund University as a professor from 1968
until 1996, when he retired with the title of professor Born Lars Valter Hörmander
emeritus. 24 January 1931
Mjällby, Blekinge, Sweden
Died 25 November 2012 (aged 81)
Biography Lund,[1] Sweden
Nationality Swedish
Alma mater Lund University
Education Known for Theory of linear partial
Hörmander was born in Mjällby, a village in Blekinge differential equations, hyperbolic
in southern Sweden where his father was a teacher. partial differential operators, the
Like his older brothers and sisters before him, he development of pseudo-
attended the realskola (secondary school), in a nearby differential operators and Fourier
town to which he commuted by train, and the integral operators as
gymnasium (high school) in Lund from which he fundamental tools
graduated in 1948. Awards Leroy P. Steele Prize (2006)
Wolf Prize (1988)
At the time when he entered the gymnasium, the
Fields Medal (1962)
principal had instituted an experiment of reducing the
period of the education from three to two years, and Scientific career
the daily activities to three hours. This freedom to Fields Mathematics
work on his own, "[greater] than the universities offer Institutions Stockholm University
in Sweden today", suited Hörmander "very well". He Stanford University
was also positively influenced by his enthusiastic Institute for Advanced Study
mathematics teacher, a docent at Lund University who Lund University
encouraged him to study university-level mathematics.
After proceeding to receive a Master's degree from Thesis On the theory of general partial
Lund University in 1950, Hörmander began his differential operators (https://dx.d
graduate studies under Marcel Riesz (who had also oi.org/10.1007/BF0239249
been the advisor for Hörmander's gymnasium teacher). 2) (1955)
He made his first research attempts in classical Doctoral Marcel Riesz
function theory and harmonic analysis, which "did not advisor Lars Gårding
amount to much" but were "an excellent preparation
Doctoral Germund Dahlquist
for working in the theory of partial differential
students Nils Dencker
equations." He turned to partial differential equations
when Riesz retired and Lars Gårding who worked
actively in that area was appointed professor.

Hörmander took a one-year break for military service from 1953 to 1954, but due to his position in
defense research was able to proceed with his studies even during that time. His Ph.D. thesis On the
theory of general partial differential operators was finished in 1955, inspired by the nearly concurrent
Ph.D. work of Bernard Malgrange and techniques for hyperbolic differential operators developed by Lars
Gårding and Jean Leray.

Fields Medal and years in the U.S.

Hörmander applied for a professorship at Stockholm University, but temporarily left for the United States
while the request was examined. He spent quarters from winter to fall in respective order at the
University of Chicago, the University of Kansas, the University of Minnesota, and finally at the Courant
Institute of Mathematical Sciences in New York City. These locations offered "much to learn" in partial
differential equations, with the exception of Chicago of which he however notes the Antoni Zygmund
seminar held by Elias Stein and Guido Weiss to have strengthened his familiarity with harmonic analysis.

In the theory of linear differential operators, "many people have contributed but the deepest and most
significant results are due to Hörmander", according to Hörmander's doctoral advisor, Lars Gårding.[2]
Hörmander won the Fields medal in 1962.[3]

Hörmander was given a position as a part-time professor at Stanford in 1963 but was soon thereafter
offered a professorship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He first wished not
to leave Sweden but attempts to find a research professorship in Sweden failed and "the opportunity to do
research full time in a mathematically very active environment was hard to resist", so he accepted the
offer and resigned from both Stanford and Stockholm and began at the Institute in the fall of 1964. Within
two years of "hard work", he felt that the environment at the institute was too demanding, and in 1967
decided to return to Lund after one year. He later noted that his best work at the institute was done during
the remaining year.

Later years
Hörmander mostly remained at Lund University as a professor after 1968 but made several visits to the
United States during the two next decades. He visited the Courant Institute in 1970, and also the Institute
for Advanced Study in 1971 and during the academic year, 1977–1978 when a special year in microlocal
analysis was held. He also visited Stanford in 1971, 1977, and 1982, and the University of California, San
Diego in winter 1990. Hörmander was briefly director of the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Stockholm
between 1984 and 1986 but only accepted a two-year appointment as he "suspected that the
administrative duties would not agree well" with him, and found that "the hunch was right". He also
served as vice president of the International Mathematical Union between 1987 and 1990. Hörmander
retired emeritus in Lund in January 1996. In 2006 he was honored with the Steele Prize for Mathematical
Exposition from the American Mathematical Society.

He was made a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1968. In 1970 he gave a plenary
address (Linear Differential Operators) at the ICM in Nice.

He received the 1988 Wolf Prize "for fundamental work in modern analysis, in particular, the application
of pseudo differential and Fourier integral operators to linear partial differential equations".[3]

In 2012 he was selected as a fellow of the American Mathematical Society, but died on 25 November
2012,[4] before the list of fellows was released.[5]

Important publications
His book Linear Partial Differential Operators, which largely was the cause for his Fields Medal, has
been described as "the first major account of this theory". It was published by Springer-Verlag in 1963 as
part of the Grundlehren series.

Hörmander devoted five years to compiling the four-volume monograph, The Analysis of Linear Partial
Differential Operators, first published between 1983 and 1985. A follow-up of his Linear Partial
Differential Operators, "illustrate[d] the vast expansion of the subject"[4] over the past 20 years, and is
considered the "standard of the field".[5] In addition to these works, he has written a recognised
introduction to several complex variables based on his 1964 Stanford lectures, and wrote the entries on
differential equations in Nationalencyklopedin.

Hörmander, Lars (2012) [1963], Linear Partial Differential Operators (https://books.google.co

m/books?id=y3bmCAAAQBAJ) (Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed.), Springer-Verlag,
doi:10.1007/978-3-642-46175-0 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2F978-3-642-46175-0), ISBN 978-
3-642-46177-4
The Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Operators I: Distribution Theory and Fourier
Analysis (https://books.google.com/books?id=aaLrCAAAQBAJ), Springer-Verlag, 2009
[1983], ISBN 978-3-540-00662-6[6][7]
The Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Operators II: Differential Operators with Constant
Coefficients (https://books.google.com/books?id=97DLDAAAQBAJ), Springer-Verlag, 2004
[1983], ISBN 978-3-540-22516-4[6][7]
The Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Operators III: Pseudo-Differential Operators (http
s://books.google.com/books?id=4ahUiHyUjhAC), Springer-Verlag, 2007 [1985], ISBN 978-3-
540-49937-4[8][9]
The Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Operators IV: Fourier Integral Operators (https://bo
oks.google.com/books?id=La-Uy_wJL3sC), Springer-Verlag, 2009 [1985], ISBN 978-3-642-
00117-8[8][9]
An Introduction to Complex Analysis in Several Variables (https://books.google.com/books?i
d=MaM7AAAAQBAJ) (3rd ed.), North Holland, 1990 [1966], ISBN 978-1-493-30273-4
Notions of Convexity (https://books.google.com/books?id=VwspLw1XKRYC), Birkhäuser
Verlag, 2006 [1994], ISBN 978-0-8176-4584-7[10]
 Lectures on Nonlinear Hyperbolic Differential Equations (https://books.google.com/books?id
=qps02wnhmEMC), Springer-Verlag, 2003 [1987], ISBN 978-3-540-62921-4

See also

Biographies portal

Mathematics portal

Hörmander's condition
Hörmander's theorem
Oscillatory integral operator

Notes
^ Wolf Foundation. The 1988 Wolf Foundation Prize In Mathematics. Retrieved September
20, 2005. [6] (http://www.wolffund.org.il/full.asp?id=72)
^ L. Gårding. Hörmander's work on linear differential operators. Proceedings of the
International Congress of Mathematicians. Stockholm, 1962 (Stockholm, 1963). As quoted
by O'Connor & Robertson.
^ Wolf Foundation.
^ Unknown. "About the Author". Amazon.com entry for The Analysis of Linear Partial
Differential Operators I. Retrieved September 20, 2005 [7] (https://www.amazon.com/exec/o
bidos/tg/detail/-/3540006621)
^ Wolf Foundation.

References
1. Hormander biography - University of St Andrews (http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/histor
y/Biographies/Hormander.html)
2. Lars Hörmander Receives 2006 AMS Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition (http://www.a
ms.org/news?news_id=525). American Mathematical Society.
3. "Fields Medals 1962" (https://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Prizes/Fields/1962/index.ht
ml#0x82496a1f_0x0005ea00). International Mathematical Union. Retrieved 2019-07-29.
4. "In Memoriam of Lars Hörmander" (https://web.archive.org/web/20140110084802/http://ww
w.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=24890&news_item=6004). University of Lund. Archived from
the original (http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=24890&news_item=6004) on 2014-01-
10. Retrieved 2013-06-09.
5. List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society (https://www.ams.org/profession/fellow
s-list), retrieved 2013-01-21.
6. Taylor, Michael E. (1985), "Book Review of The Analysis of Linear Partial Differential
Operators, Vols I & II" (http://www.maa.org/programs/maa-awards/writing-awards/book-revie
w-of-the-analysis-of-linear-partial-differential-operators-vols-i-ii), Amer. Math. Monthly, 92
(10): 745–749, doi:10.2307/2323245 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2323245),
JSTOR 2323245 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2323245)
7. Trèves, François (1984), "Review: The Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Operators, Vols.
I & II, by Lars Hörmander" (http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.bams/1183551593), Bull. Amer.
 Math. Soc. (N.S.), 10 (2): 337–340, doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-1984-15276-5 (https://doi.org/1
0.1090%2Fs0273-0979-1984-15276-5)
8. Boutet de Monvel, Louis (1987), "Review: The Analysis of Linear Partial Differential
Operators, Vols. III & IV, by Lars Hörmander" (http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.bams/11835536
89), Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.), 16 (1): 161–167, doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-1987-15500-5
(https://doi.org/10.1090%2Fs0273-0979-1987-15500-5)
9. Wilcox, Calvin H. (1986), "Review: The Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Operators,
Vols. III & IV, by Lars Hörmander", SIAM Review, 28 (2): 285–287, doi:10.1137/1028098 (htt
ps://doi.org/10.1137%2F1028098)
10. Kawai, Takahiro (1995), "Review: Notions of convexity, by Lars Hörmander" (https://www.am
s.org/journals/bull/1995-32-04/S0273-0979-1995-00608-7/S0273-0979-1995-00608-7.pdf)
(PDF), Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.), 32 (4): 429–431, doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-1995-
00608-7 (https://doi.org/10.1090%2Fs0273-0979-1995-00608-7)

Bibliography
Hörmander, Lars. Autobiography. Fields Medallists' Lectures. M. Sir Michael Atiyah & D.
Iagolnitzer (editors). World Scientific. ISBN 981-238-259-3
J. J. O'Connor & E. F. Robertson. Lars Hörmander (http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~his
tory/Mathematicians/Hormander.html). MacTutor archive biography. Retrieved September
20, 2005

External links
Boman, Jan; Sigurdsson, Ragnar (August 2015), "To the Memory of Lars Hörmander (1931–
2012)", Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 62 (8): 890–907,
doi:10.1090/noti1274 (https://doi.org/10.1090%2Fnoti1274)

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