Karl Menger

:This article is about the mathematician, not about his father, the economist Carl Menger.

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Karl Menger (born in Vienna, Austria, January 13 1902 -- died in Highland Park, Illinois, USA, October 5 1985) was a mathematician of great scope and depth.

Related Topics:
January 13 - 1902 - October 5 - 1985 - Mathematician

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He was the son of the famous economist Carl Menger.

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He did work on algebras, curve and dimension theory, and geometries. He was a student of Hans Hahn and received his PhD from the University of Vienna in 1924.

Related Topics:
Hans Hahn - University of Vienna - 1924

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His most famous popular contribution was the Menger sponge (mistakenly known as Sierpinski's sponge), a three-dimensional version of Sierpinski's carpet. It is also related to the Cantor set and the Sierpinski square.

Related Topics:
Menger sponge - Sierpinski - Sierpinski's carpet - Cantor set - Sierpinski square

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With Arthur Cayley, Menger is considered one of the founders of distance geometry; especially by having formalized definitions to the notions of angle and of curvature in terms of directly measurable physical quantities, namely ratios of distance values.

Related Topics:
Arthur Cayley - Distance geometry

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The characteristic mathematical expressions appearing in those definitions are Cayley-Menger determinants.

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He also is credited with Menger's theorem.

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