Hjalmar Mellin

Hjalmar Mellin
Born(1854-06-19)19 June 1854
Died5 April 1933(1933-04-05) (aged 78)
NationalityFinnish
Alma materUniversity of Helsinki (Ph.D., 1882)
Known forMellin formula
Mellin transform
SpouseHilda Koskinen d.1909 Hilda Maria Sofia Peltola d.1927
Children4[note 1]
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsHelsinki University of Technology
Thesis De algebraiska funktionerna af en oberoende variabel  (1882)
Doctoral advisorGösta Mittag-Leffler
Doctoral studentsErnst Leonard Lindelöf

Robert Hjalmar Mellin (19 June 1854 – 5 April 1933) was a Finnish mathematician and function theorist.[1][2]

Biography

Mellin was born on June 19, 1854 to priest and a former teacher Gustaf Robert Mellin (1826-1880) and Sofia Augusta Thérmen (1821-1888) in Liminka, Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland. He was the oldest among his four siblings, He worked as a translator of his father's religious and literary works after his father's expulsion from the priesthood in 1886 because of his heavy drinking, although he was suspended in 1864 because of the same reason. Hjarmar's mother Sofia was the sister of the former Councilor of State, Karl Otto Themén (1818-1893).[3] Mellin studied at the University of Helsinki and later in Berlin under Karl Weierstrass.[4][2] He is chiefly remembered as the developer of the integral transform known as the Mellin transform. He studied related gamma functions, hypergeometric functions, Dirichlet series and the Riemann ζ function. He was appointed professor at the Polytechnic Institute in Helsinki, which later became Helsinki University of Technology with Mellin as first rector.

Later in his career Mellin also became known for his critical opposition to the theory of relativity; he published several papers in which he argued against the theory from a chiefly philosophical standpoint. In his private life he was known as an outspoken fennoman: a proponent of adopting Finnish as the language of state and culture in the Grand Duchy of Finland, in preference to Swedish, which had predominantly been used hitherto.

See also

References

  1. ^ Mellin-Barnes,2022
  2. ^ a b Dubovyk, Gluza, Sumogyi, Ievgen, Janusz, Gábor (December 15, 2022). Mellin-Barnes Integrals: A Primer on Particle Physics Applications. Springer. pp. 6 (Preface). ISBN 9783031142727.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ "Hjalmar Mellin - Biography". Maths History. Retrieved 2023-12-14.
  4. ^ Paris, Kaminski, R.D., D. (September 24, 2001). Asymtotics and Merlin-Barnes Integrals. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. p. 25. ISBN 9781139430128.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Media related to Hjalmar Mellin at Wikimedia Commons

  1. ^ He has no children at his second marriage