Eberhard Hopf

Eberhard Hopf (1902 to 1983) was a German mathematician and astronomer, born in Salzburg in Austria-Hungary, whose scientific career was divided between Germany and the United States. He is counted among the founding fathers of ergodic theory and as a pioneer of bifurcation theory, and he also contributed to partial differential equations, integral equations, fluid dynamics and differential geometry. His maximum principle of 1927 remains one of the most important techniques in the theory of elliptic partial differential equations. He took his doctorate in mathematics at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin in 1926 and his Habilitation in mathematical astronomy there in 1929. The American Mathematical Society invited him as Gibbs Lecturer in 1971 and awarded him the Leroy P. Steele Prize in 1981.