We offer five notebooks kept by mathematician Fritz John and his wife, Charlotte John, while at Gottingen, in the Ph.D program, 1929-1933. They include notes for classes given by Richard Courant, B.L. van der Waerden, Gustav Herglotz, and Franz Rellich. We also offer a typed-and-manuscript copy of John's dissertation.
All are more-or-less uniformly bound in stiff wrappers, and stand 11 1/4 inches x 7 3/4 inches. They seem to be a mixture of original typed sheets and carbons--Mrs. John said that they produced a copy for each other. There are numerous additions to the notes in manuscript at the points where the typewriter failed the mathematical notation.
The group: [Sold]
When I purchased these books from Mrs. John in 1994 (?), she told me that she and her husband would take notes during class, and then retire to their rooms for the night, where they would work together on transcribing the notes and typing them. It was very much a joint effort. John was Courant Chair at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University in 1978; Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology; Senior U.S. Scientist Humboldt awardee in West Germany. He was awarded honorary degrees by the universities of Rome, Bath and Heidelberg. John received the George David Birkhoff Prize in Applied Mathematics (1973), the Gibbs Lecturer of the AMS in 1974, and the Steele Prize by the American Mathematical Society in 1984.
[Richard Courant]
Theorie der partiellen Differentialgleichungen. 1931/32. 256pp.
[Richard Courant]
Auszug aus den Vorlesung Variationsrechnung I. 85pp. 1929.
[B.L. van der Waerden]
Vorlesungen ueber Kontinuierliche Gruppen von Professor B.L. van der Waerden. Gottingen, Sommersemester, 1929. Typed notes for van der Waerden's class kept by Fritz and Charlotte John, for van der Waerden's class given during the summer semester of 1929. (4pp), 203pp. Meticulous notes, with manuscript bits of equations added in.
Typed original. Perfect bound in wrappers. The book has come apart at page 18, and thus in two parts.
[Gustav Herglotz]
Elliptischen Funktionen. 340pp, plus index (!) . 1931/32.
[Franz Rellich]
Integralgelichungen und allgemeine Spektraltheorie. 132pp. 1933.
Also included:
[Fritz John Dissertation]
Fritz John's dissertation. Bestimmung einer Funktion aus ihren Integralen ueber Gewisse Mannigfaltigkeiten. Bound as the others. 74pp. Many additional manuscript equations. This seems to differ markedly from the publication (John's first) of this title and subject in 1934, or so at least it seems in Jurgen Moser's Fritz John, Collected Papers book, volume 1 #2. There are also penciled annotations; I cannot tell who has written them, if it was by John or perhaps by his dissertation adviser, Richard Courant.
[Sample page from John's dissertation.]
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