Cahit Arf (11 October 1910, Thessaloniki – 26 December 1997, Istanbul) was a Turkish mathematician, scientist, and former head of the Science Division of TÜBİTAK. He won the İnönü Prize in 1948 and the TÜBİTAK Science Award in 1974. In 1980 he received honorary doctorates from Istanbul Technical University and Karadeniz Technical University, and in 1981 an honorary doctorate from METU. In 1990 an international symposium on Number Theory was organized in honor of Cahit Arf. The first conferences on Rings and Geometry, on which he conducted advanced research, were also held in Istanbul in 1984. Since 2009, Arf's portrait and formula have appeared on the 10 Turkish lira note.
Life
He was born on 11 October 1910 in Thessaloniki. In 1912, because of the Balkan War, his family moved to Istanbul. He attended primary school in the first section of the schools called Sultani in those years, and while still in the fifth grade, a young teacher he met led him to become interested in mathematics. By the time he reached the middle section of high school, Cahit Arf, who now solved mathematics problems his classmates could not, drew the attention of his family and teachers with this talent, and was sent to France by his family to study at the St. Louis High School in Paris. Cahit Arf, who completed his three years of high school study in two years and returned to Turkey, was at that time included among the candidate students to be sent to Europe by examination for higher education by the Turkish government.
Higher education
He completed his higher education at the École Normale Supérieure in France in 1932. After teaching mathematics for a while at Galatasaray High School, he worked as an associate professor candidate at the Faculty of Science of Istanbul University. He went to Germany to do his doctorate. In 1938 he completed his doctorate at the University of Göttingen.
Career
When Cahit Arf returned to Turkey, he rose to professor and ordinarius professor at the Faculty of Science of Istanbul University and worked there until 1962. Later he began teaching mathematics at Robert College. In 1964 he became the first head of the science council of the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK).
Later, in the United States, which he visited, he carried out research and studies; he served as a visiting faculty member at the University of California. Because he wished to live in Turkey, he returned to Turkey of his own accord in 1967. Shortly after his return, he received offers as a visiting faculty member from universities in Canada and America. However, before he could answer these offers, a telephone call from Middle East Technical University told him that he had been appointed to that university and that his plane ticket was on the way, and he had now begun his duties at Middle East Technical University. He retired in 1980. After retiring, he contributed greatly to the founding of TÜBİTAK and took a position at the Gebze Research Center affiliated with TÜBİTAK. Between 1983 and 1989 he served as president of the Turkish Mathematical Society.
Arf won the İnönü Prize (1943) and the TÜBİTAK Science Award (1974). In the speech he gave while receiving this award, he explained the scientist as he understood him with the words "The aim of the scientist is to understand," immediately followed by "but to understand in capital letters." An international symposium on algebra and number theory held in his honor took place in Silivri between 3 and 7 September 1990. The first conferences on rings and geometry were also held in Istanbul in 1984. Arf presented an article on the concept of geometry in mathematics. Cahit Arf died on 26 December 1997 due to severe heart disease.
Work
Cahit Arf gained worldwide fame with his work in algebra. In addition to his work on the constructibility of synthetic geometry problems with the aid of ruler and compass, and studies that bear his name in the literature such as the Arf invariant — concerning the invariants arising in the classification of the quadratic forms of bodies — and Arf rings, he brought to mathematical science the theorem known as the "Hasse–Arf Theorem." He devised terms such as the "Arf constant" and "Arf closures."
{\displaystyle Arf(q)=\sum _{i=1}^{n}q(a;)q(b;)\epsilon Z_{2}a;,b;i=1,2,3.......,n.}
His views on mathematics
Cahit Arf regarded mathematics not as a profession but as a way of life. He constantly told his students: "Do not memorize mathematics; do it and understand it yourselves."
He said, "Mathematics is essentially a matter of patience. One must understand by discovering, not by memorizing."
He emphasized the artistic side of mathematics by saying, "Mathematics is an art like painting, music, and sculpture."
"Mathematics is an inductive science, and this inductive science is valid for infinite sets. We grasp these infinities inductively, and when we grasp them, we feel that infinity. Limitlessness... And this gives us happiness because we forget death... Everyone wants to work in the field where they feel immortal. I too felt myself immortal in mathematics."
Conferences organized about him
A special conference in Arf's name and memory is organized every year at the Department of Mathematics of Middle East Technical University.
The speakers of the Arf conferences held at METU and their affiliated institutions:
2009: Gunter Harder - Bonn University Institute of Mathematics
2007: Hendrik Lenstra - Leiden University Institute of Mathematics
2006: Jean-Pierre Serre - Collège de France
2005: Peter Sarnak - Princeton University and Institute for Advanced Study
2004: Robert Langlands - Institute for Advanced Study
2003: David Mumford - Brown University Department of Applied Mathematics
2002: Don Zagier - Utrecht University/Collège de France
2001: Gerhard Frey - University of Essen Institute for Experimental Mathematics
Sources
- Turkish Wikipedia: tr.wikipedia.org
- English Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org