Alfred Tauber (5 November 1866 – 26 July 1942) He was born in Austria-Hungary, lived in Vienna, Austria after the dissolution of the empire, and was deported and murdered for being Jewish when the Theresienstadt concentration camp was emptied of Jews in 1942.

Life and academic career

Born in Pressburg, Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire (now Bratislava, Slovakia), he began studying mathematics at Vienna University in 1884, obtained his Ph.D. in 1889, and his habilitation in 1891.

Starting from 1892, he worked as chief mathematician at the Phönix insurance company until 1908, when he became an a.o. professor at the University of Vienna, though, already from 1901, he had been honorary professor at TU Vienna and director of its insurance mathematics chair. In 1933, he was awarded the Grand Decoration of Honour in Silver for Services to the Republic of Austria, when he was forced to resign as a consequence of the "Anschluss". On 28–29 June 1942, he was deported with transport IV/2, č. 621 to Theresienstadt, where he was murdered on 26 July 1942. However, cites two papers on actuarial mathematics which do not appear in these two bibliographical lists and Binder's bibliography of Tauber's works (1984, pp. 163–166), while listing 71 entries including the ones in the bibliography of and the two cited by Hlawka, does not includes the short note so the exact number of his works is not known. According to , his scientific research can be divided into three areas: the first one comprises his work on the theory of functions of a complex variable and on potential theory, the second one includes works on linear differential equations and on the Gamma function, while the last one includes his contributions to actuarial science. Tauber's most important scientific contributions belong to the first of his research areas, even if his work on potential theory has been overshadowed by that of Aleksandr Lyapunov. this result was the starting point of numerous investigations, then it is a convergent series. Starting from 1913 onward, G. H. Hardy and J. E. Littlewood used the term Tauberian to identify this class of theorems. Describing with a little more detail Tauber's 1897 work, it can be said that his main achievements are the following two theorems:

:. If the series is Abel summable to sum , i.e. , and if moreover , then converges to .

This theorem is, according to , the forerunner of all Tauberian theory: the condition is the first Tauberian condition, which later had many profound generalizations. In the remaining part of his paper, by using the theorem above, Tauber proved the following, more general result:

:. The series converges to sum if and only if the two following conditions are satisfied:

  1. is Abel summable and
  2. .

This result is not a trivial consequence of . The greater generality of this result with respect to the former one is due to the fact it proves the exact equivalence between ordinary convergence on one side and Abel summability (condition 1) jointly with Tauberian condition (condition 2) on the other. claims that this latter result must have appeared to Tauber much more complete and satisfying respect to the as it states a necessary and sufficient condition for the convergence of a series while the former one was simply a stepping stone to it: the only reason why Tauber's second theorem is not mentioned very often seems to be that it has no profound generalization as the first one has, though it has its rightful place in all detailed developments of summability of series. Precisely, considers the real part and imaginary part of a power series ,

:<math>f(z)=\sum_{k=1}^{+\infty} c_kz^k =\varphi(\theta)+\mathrm{i} \psi(\theta)</math>

where

  • with being the absolute value of the given complex variable,
  • for every natural number ,
  • and are trigonometric series and therefore periodic functions, expressing the real and imaginary part of the given power series.

Under the hypothesis that is less than the convergence radius of the power series , Tauber proves that and satisfy the two following equations:

:<math>\varphi(\theta)=\frac{1}{2\pi}\int_0^\pi \left\{\psi(\theta+\phi) - \psi(\theta-\phi)\right\}\cot\left(\frac{\phi}{2}\right)\,\mathrm{d}\phi</math>

:<math>\psi(\theta)=-\frac{1}{2\pi}\int_0^\pi \left\{\varphi(\theta+\phi) - \varphi(\theta-\phi)\right\}\cot\left(\frac{\phi}{2}\right)\mathrm{d}\phi</math>

Assuming then , he is also able to prove that the above equations still hold if and are only absolutely integrable: this result is equivalent to defining the Hilbert transform on the circle since, after some calculations exploiting the periodicity of the functions involved, it can be proved that and are equivalent to the following pair of Hilbert transforms:

::<math>

\varphi(\theta)=\frac{1}{2\pi}\int_{-\pi}^\pi \psi(\phi) \cot\left(\frac{\theta-\phi}{2}\right)\mathrm{d}\phi \qquad

\psi(\theta)=\frac{1}{2\pi}\int_{-\pi}^\pi \varphi(\phi) \cot\left(\frac{\theta-\phi}{2}\right)\mathrm{d}\phi

</math>

Finally, it is perhaps worth pointing out an application of the results of , given (without proof) by Tauber himself in the short research announcement :

:the complex valued continuous function defined on a given circle is the boundary value of a holomorphic function defined in its open disk if and only if the two following conditions are satisfied

  1. the function is uniformly integrable in every neighborhood of the point , and
  2. the function satisfies .

Selected publications

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See also

  • Actuarial science
  • Hardy–Littlewood tauberian theorem
  • Summability theory

Notes

References

Biographical and general references

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Scientific references

  • , and also .
  • , 2nd Edition published by Chelsea Publishing Company, 1991, , .
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  • Alfred Tauber at encyclopedia.com