"The Gamma Function: An Eclectic Tour"

Speaker(s)

Prof. Gopala Krishna Srinivasan

Affiliation

âIndian Institute of Technology, Bombay

Date

May 12, 2016, 12:30 p.m.

Room

room 4060

Seminar

Seminar of Mathematical Physics Equations Group

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The Gamma function was introduced into analysis in 1729 by L. Euler in a letter to Goldbach. It has since then attracted the attention of the great masters of the 19th century such as Legengre, Gauss, Riemann  and many others.  It continues to taunt the present generation with its vast store of interesting properties and through its ubiquity in Physics, Probability and Number theory.

We follow the historical development of this function taking a look at its properties including its characterizations in particular  Wielandt's beautiful characterization in the complex domain brought in prominence by Remmert and Fuglede's sharpening of Wielandt's theorem.

The talk will be a historical tour through almost three centuries since the birth of this transcendent.

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