Louis Nirenberg

Louis Nirenberg (born February 28, 1925, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada—died January 26, 2020, New York, New York, U.S.) was a Canadian-born American mathematician who was noted for his work in analysis, with an emphasis on partial differential equations. In 2015 he was a recipient (with John F. Nash, Jr.) of the Abel Prize.

Nirenberg grew up in Montreal and received a bachelor’s degree (1945) in physics and mathematics from McGill University. He expected to continue his education in theoretical physics and worked in the summer of 1945 at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) in Montreal. At the NRC Nirenberg became acquainted with physicist Ernest Courant, whose father was mathematician Richard Courant, cofounder of the New York University (NYU) mathematical institute that was later named in his honour. The elder Courant recommended that Nirenberg get a master’s degree in mathematics at NYU before continuing his studies in physics. Nirenberg followed his advice, earning that degree from NYU in 1947. However, he decided to carry on in mathematics, and two years later he received a doctoral degree from the university. He became a research assistant at NYU in 1949 and a professor there in 1951. Indeed, he spent his entire career at NYU; he became professor emeritus in 1999.

Much of Nirenberg’s work from the very beginning involved partial differential equations (equations in which a function of several variables is related to its partial derivatives, each being a derivative with respect to one variable and all the others remaining constant) of the elliptic type (so called because such equations resemble that which describes an ellipse). In his 1949 doctoral thesis, The Determination of a Closed Convex Surface Having Given Line Elements, Nirenberg used partial differential equations to solve a significant differential geometry problem that had been posed (1916) but only partly solved by German American mathematician Hermann Weyl. Nirenberg used such equations to solve problems in complex analysis (the study of functions involving both real and imaginary numbers) as well as in applied subjects such as economics and fluid dynamics.

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Nirenberg was also noted within mathematics for his willingness to collaborate with other mathematicians; about 90 percent of his papers were collaborations. His significant contributions included the Gagliardo-Nirenberg interpolation inequality (with Emilio Gagliardo). In addition, he mentored numerous graduate students (46 mathematicians studied under him).

Nirenberg received many honours, including the inaugural Crafoord Prize in mathematics from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1982), the American Mathematical Society’s Steele Prize (1994), the National Medal of Science (1995), and the first Chern Medal (2010), at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad, India.