Stefan Banach: Google doodle honors Polish mathematician and father of modern functional analysis

Stefan Banach, the father of modern functional analysis and a founding member of the Lwów School of Mathematics, is honoured in today’s Google Doodle. This significant mathematician of the 20th century became a professor on this day in 1922.

Kraków, Poland is where Stefan Banach was born. His father sent him to be raised by a family in the city, and he never met his mother. Banach, who had weak eyesight and was judged unfit for military service during World War 1, worked in local schools rather.

Banach was hired by the Lvov Technical University after his spare-time math projects were published. He was a professor and largely self-taught mathematician. A young Banach was introduced to and made a friend with by eminent mathematician and educator Hugo Steinhaus. The game and probability theory pioneer Steinhaus would later refer to Banach as his “greatest scientific discovery.”

Steinhaus’ connections in academia enabled Banach to establish modern functional analysis, a brand-new field of mathematics. Banach spaces, Banach algebra, and the Banach-Steinhaus theorem are only a few of the notions that bear his name.

He was also a founding member of the renowned mathematic academy in what is now Lviv, Ukraine. The atmosphere of the school has a distinct Banach flavour. Faculty would gather in busy coffee shops to formulate and discuss problems while writing directly on the tables.

One of the 20th century’s most important mathematicians, according to many, was Banach. He made significant contributions to a number of fields that are being researched and used today, including measure theory, integration, the theory of sets, orthogonal series, and functional analysis.

Thank you for your invaluable contributions to mathematics, Stefan Banach!