János Dezső Aczél (; 26 December 1924 – 1 January 2020),We remember Distinguished Professor Emeritus János Aczel, University of Waterloo also known as John Aczel, was a Hungarian-Canadian mathematician, who specialized in functional equations and information theory.
Professional career Aczél earned a doctorate in mathematical analysis from the University of Budapest, and held positions at the University of Cologne, Kossuth University, University of Miskolc, and University of Szeged.Biography as a speaker at the Marschak Colloquium at UCLA , 1999, accessed 25 January 2013. He joined the University of Waterloo faculty in 1965, eventually becoming Distinguished Professor in the Department of Pure Mathematics.Emeritus/Adjunct faculty, Pure Mathematics, Waterloo, accessed 25 January 2013.
He was the founder of the journal Aequationes Mathematicae, first published in 1968, and remained its honorary editor-in-chief.Editorial board of Aequationes Mathematicae , accessed 25 January 2013.
Awards and honors Aczél held honorary degrees from the University of Karlsruhe, the University of Graz, and the University of Silesia in Katowice. In 1971, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.RSC Fellow listing , accessed 25 January 2013. He was the 1988 winner of the Santiago Ramón y Cajal Medal. In 1990, he became an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences,Member listing, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, accessed 25 January 2013. and, in 2004, he was honored by the academy as one of the "big five" - five distinguished Hungarian mathematicians born in 1924 and graduating/obtaining a doctorate in 1947. The other honorees were John Horvath, Steven Gaal, Ákos Császár and László Fuchs. In 2008, he became an honorary member of the Hamburg Mathematical Society, the oldest active mathematical society in the world.János Aczél's Latest Honour, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, accessed 25 January 2013.
In 2004, he won the Kampé de Fériet Award of the annual Information Processing and Management of Uncertainty conference, "for his pioneering work on the theory of functional equations, with applications in many fields, such as information measures, index numbers, group decision making, aggregation, production functions, laws of science, theory of measurement and utility theory."Kampé de Fériet Award, IPMU, accessed 25 January 2013.
Issues of the journal Aequationes Mathematicae were dedicated to Aczél in 1999, 2005, and 2010, in honor of his 75th, 80th, and 85th birthdays. He died at the age of 95 on 1 January 2020....
Selected publications Articles
Books Aczél was the author or co-author of:
.Review of Funktionalgleichungen der Theorie der geometrischen Objekte by Albert Nijenhuis, . . Previously published in German as Vorlesungen über Funktionalgleichungen und ihre Anwendungen (Birkhäuser, 1961).Review of Vorlesungen über Funktionalgleichungen und ihre Anwendungen by Marek Kuczma, .Review of Lectures on functional equations and their applications by M. Hosszú, .Review of Lectures on Functional Equations and their Applications by Frank Hahn (1968), American Mathematical Monthly 75 (3): 314, . p. 1235 .Review of On measures of information and their characterizations by J. Kampé de Fériet (1977), Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 83 (2): 192–196, . .Review of A short course on functional equations by Dale K. Osborne, . .Review of Functional equations in several variables by K. Lajkó, .
He was the editor of: (1st edition 1984) (1st edition 1995)
References
External links Aczél's homepage at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Author profile in the database zbMATH