Danilo Blanu?a

Danilo Blanu?a (December 7 1903 - August 8 1987) was a Croatian mathematician, physicist, engineer and a professor at the University of Zagreb.

Mathematics

In mathematics, Blanu?a became famous for discovering the second and third known snarks in 1946 (the Petersen graph was the first), triggering a new area of graph theory. These graphs are part of the solution of the 'four color problem', i.e. the proof of the four color theorem. (Snarks were so named by the American mathematician Martin Gardner in 1976, after the mysterious and elusive object of Lewis Carroll's poem The Hunting of the Snark).

Related Topics:
Snarks - 1946 - Petersen graph - Graph theory - Four color theorem - Martin Gardner - 1976 - Lewis Carroll - The Hunting of the Snark

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Blanu?a's most important works were related to isometric immersions of two-dimensional Lobachevsky plane into six-dimensional Euclidean space and generalizations, in the theory of the special functions (Bessel functions), in differential geometry, and in graph theory. His results are included in the Japanese mathematical encyclopedia Sugaku jiten in Tokyo, (1962) published by Iwanami Shoten.

Related Topics:
Isometric - Immersion - Lobachevsky - Euclid - Bessel function - Differential geometry - Graph theory - Japan - Encyclopedia - Tokyo - 1962

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~