William Feller - Early life and education, Work, Results

Mathematician, born in Zagreb, Croatia. He studied at Zürich and Göttingen, and after teaching at Kiel, left Germany in 1933 for Stockholm. In 1939 he emigrated to the USA, holding chairs at Brown (1939–45), Cornell (1945–50), and Princeton (1950–70) universities. He is best known for his work in probability theory.

William (Vilim) Feller (July 7, 1906 - January 14, 1970), born Willibrord, was a Croatian-American mathematician specializing in probability theory.

Early life and education

Feller was born in Zagreb to Ida Perc and Eugene Victor Feller (although according to Gian-Carlo Rota, Feller's father's surname was a "Slavic tongue twister", which William changed at the age of twenty).

William finished the elementary and middle education in Zagreb as well as two years of his math study.

Work

Feller held a docent position at the University of Kiel beginning in 1928.

The works of Feller are contained in 104 papers and two books on a variety of topics such as mathematical analysis, theory of measurement, functional analysis, geometry, and differential equations.

He was the foremost probabilist outside of Russia. Feller contributed to the study of the relationship between Markov chains and differential equations.

Results

Numerous topics relating to probability are named after him, including the Feller process, Feller explosion test, Feller-Brown movement, Feller property and Lindberg-Feller theorem. Books written by him and published as textbooks are considered invaluable in the popularisation of the theory of probability and among the best written during the 20th century.

Despite the fact that he spent the better part of his life out of Croatia where he was born and grew up, and where he started his education, he was in touch with his relatives there, and with his colleagues at University of Zagreb, whom he sometimes visited and lectured.

Feller initiated the publication of the now well-known review journal Mathematical Reviews.