History of Mathematics & Teaching of Mathematics Srospatak, May 23-27, 2012

Nikola Obreshkov his life and mathematical achievements

Snezhana Gocheva-Ilievaa, Atanas Ivanova Plovdiv University Paisii Hilendarski, Bulgaria

Main points of his biography The outstanding Bulgarian mathematician Nikola Obreshkov was born in the town of Varna on March 6, 1896, in a large 8 children family. His father Dimitar Obreshkov was a military officer, achieving the rank of a colonel. His mother Kitza was a music lover and fluent in French. In 1912, in sixteen years old as a pupil in Sofia Boys High school Obreshkov published his first scientific work Expressing functions of half angles in terms of functions of a hole angle in the Journal of Bulgarian Physico-mathematical Society [1]. Obreshkov graduated from the Mathematical Department of Sofia University in 1920. In the same year he was appointed as assistant at the Chair of Calculus.

NIKOLA OBRESHKOV (1896 - 1963) In 1922 he got his habilitation as an associate professor of algebra. In 1922-1923 he was on a postgraduate-specialization in Berlin. Since 1925 till 1928 he was an extraordinary professor in Sofia University and in 1928 he became a full professor. Since 1928 till his death in 1963 he was a Chairman of the Algebra Department at Sofia University. In 1932 Obreshkov, being professor, got his first doctoral degree from the University of Palermo, Italy. In 1933 he got a doctor of science degree (Docteur s sciences) from the Sorbonne, Paris. His second thesis Sur la sommation des sries divergentes'' was published in the most distinguished mathematical journal - Acta Mathematica, founded by Mittag Leffler.

Nikola Obreshkov became a regular member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 1945. In 1951 he was appointed as the first Director of the Mathematical Institute of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, where he was until his death in 1963 [1, 2]. Obreshkov was giving lectures in a range of mathematical disciplines: Algebra, Probability Theory, Summability of Divergent Series, Number Theory. He was a visiting professor at the universities of Hamburg, Berlin, Geneva, Rome, Palermo, Leipzig, Dresden, and other. He participated in a number of mathematical conferences, including in the World Congresses of Mathematicians in Oslo (1936) and Edinburgh (1958), and in the First Congress of Hungarian Mathematicians (1950). Main Obreshkovs scientific achievements The rich scientific heritage of Nikola Obreshkov comprises about 250 papers and some textbooks and monographs in the field of Mathematical Analysis, Algebra, Number Theory, Statistics and Probability, Mechanics, Numerical Analysis. Author of 3 books: on Algebra, Probability and Number Theory. Author of the monography Zeros of Polynomials, published by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and Verteilung und Berechnung der Nullstellen reeller Polynome, published by the German Academy of Sciences. This work was highly evaluated by scientists. The first papers of Nikola Obreshkov published abroad appeared in Notes of Acadmie des Sciences, Paris, and all they are presented by Emil Borel. These papers are from the theory of divergent series a field of about 1/3 of all Obreshkovs works, a well investigated area of the classical analysis of 20th century. For the summation of divergent series Obreskov was reputed as one of the greatest experts in the field. He got many deep results in summation of the Taylors, Dirichlet, Fourier and Laplace series. He was the first who posed and solved the problem of summation of the Taylors series of a function f, holomorphic at the origin, at points on the boundary of its Borels polygon G of summation. In his doctoral thesis, defended in Sorbonne, Obreshkov formulated and developed more general methods of summation of divergent series than those of Borel, Rietz and Mitag-Lefler and applied them to the summation of Dirichlet and Taylor series. Also, in 1932-1935, he achieved the summation of Fourier series by using Cesros methods. He got a generalization of the many theorems of Lebesque, Hardy-Littlewood, Pollard, Bosanque and others, which appeared as particular cases of his results. In particular, he obtained a version of the classical Taylors formula using Cesaros means. For example, under corresponding assumption for the derivatives of a function f ( x ) up to the order n + k + 1 , the following representation holds = f (a + h) where n+ k = A = , Rn n
k n k k s s 1 n An h ( ) 1 k s 1 An h s f ( a ) + k ( 1) f ( ) ( a + h ) + Rn k ! An An s s! = 1= 0

( 1)
Ank

h n + k +1 (1 ) ( q 1)! f ( n+ k +1) a + h ( ), n !( n + k ) !
n +1 q

the number q is an arbitrary positive integer, and 0 < < 1 . Obreshkov got many results for the classical orthogonal polynomials: Jacobis, Laguerres and Bessels polynomials. His asymptotics of Jacobis polynomials are referred by G. Szegss monograph Orthogonal polynomials (1939). In 1940 Obreshkov derived qudrature formulas of a quite general form having well-known formulas as particular cases. An example of such a formula is the following:

) dx F ( x=
a

ba ( F (a) + F (b) ) + 2
k k

( ) (b a ) + ( )!
=2
2k

(F

( 1)

( a ) + ( 1)

F (

1)

( b ) ) + Rk

with the error term

Rk =

( 1) b x a k b x k F ( 2 k ) ( x) dx ( ) ( ) ( 2k ) ! a
k

This is a generalization of Newtons trapezoidal rule. One of his interesting results, published in 1941, is influenced by a classical theorem of G. Polya. Obreshkov gave in it the general form of a pair of entire functions which are uniform limits of polynomials with only real and interlacing zeros. In the same year appeared also his monograph Quelques classes de fonctions entieres limites de polynomes et de fonctions meromorphes limites de fractions rationelles, Actualites Sci. Indust., Paris, Herman. In 1958 he has obtained a number of theorems for solving Tauberian type problem for the classical Laplace transform

= f (s)

exp(sx)F ( x)dx
0

and generalized it in a form [3]

f ( x) = ( xt ) (t )dt
0

called later Obreshkovs transform. In 1903 Borel proved that if a, b are arbitrary fixed real numbers, then there exist infinitely many triples of integers x, y, z , not all equal to zero, such that

ax + by + z <

a 2 + b2 + 1
z2

where is an universal constant. More than 50 years the value of this constant remained unknown. In his fundamental book History of Number Theory, L. E. Dickson called this constant by the name of Borel. In 1957 Obreshkov proved that in fact = 1 and this result is also

not widely known, because in the stereotypical edition of Dicksons book from 1966 remains the old assertion that the constant of Borel is not found. These are only a part from the numerous remarkable mathematical achievements of Nikola Obreshkov. Obreshkov has many followers among Bulgarian mathematicians, even till now. Among them are: Acad. Lubomir Iliev, Acad. Blagovest Sendov, Acad. Peter Russev, Prof. Kiril Dochev. From Plovdiv Univeristy Obreshkovs method for localization of zeros of polynomials was generalized for simultaneous finding off all zeros of algebraic, exponential and trigonometric polynomials by our colleagues Prof. Khristo Semerdzhiev, Prof. Nikolay Kyurkchiev and others. Acknowledgment This work was supported by the Scientific Research Department of Plovdiv University Paisii Hilendarski, Bulgaria, grant NI11-FMI-004.

References [1] Penkov B., Nikola Obreshkoff (1986-1963), Encomium, Annuaire de lUniversit de Sofia, Livre 1, tome 89, 1995, 11-17. [2] http://www.math.bas.bg/serdica/obreshkoff.html [3] Obreshkov, N., Selected papers, vol. 1 and 2, Marin Drinov Acad. Publ. House, 2006.