Scienceמיכאל פקטה

Michael Fekete

Michael Fekete was a Hungarian-Israeli mathematician who taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and received the Israel Prize in 1955.

1886 to 1957Research on the transfinite diameterFekete's lemma and Fekete polynomialsTutoring John von NeumannProvost of the Hebrew University

Born: 19 July 1886, Senta
Died: 13 May 1957, Jerusalem
Occupation: mathematician, university teacher
Education: Eötvös Loránd University

Michael Fekete was born in 1886 in Senta

Michael Fekete was born in 1886 in Zenta, in Austria-Hungary. The town is now Senta, in Serbia. His original family name was Schwartz.

He earned his PhD at the University of Budapest in 1909, under Lipót Fejér. He then went to the University of Göttingen. He later returned to Budapest, where he became a Privatdozent.

Fekete also gave private math lessons, and one of his pupils was the young John von Neumann. In 1922 the two published a paper together, von Neumann's first. Most of Fekete's research dealt with the transfinite diameter.

In 1928 he moved to Mandate Palestine and was among the first lecturers at the Institute of Mathematics of the Hebrew University. He became a professor in 1929 and later headed the institute and served as dean of Natural Sciences. From 1946 to 1948 he was the university's provost.

He received the Israel Prize for exact sciences in 1955. He died in 1957 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot.