Academician CAIUS IACOB – a Brilliant Mathematician Fascinated by Mechanics

Abstract

The paper presents some interesting aspects related to the biography and works of Romanian mathematician Caius Iacob (1912–1992). He was famous for his works in the fields of mathematical analysis, fluid mechanics, classical hydrodynamics and compressible-flow theory. At the age of 19, he graduated from the Mathematics Faculty in Bucharest, and then he went to Paris to continue his studies at the Faculty of Sciences, where he worked on a PhD thesis under the advice of famous French mathematician Henri Villat. On 24 June 1935, Caius Iacob successfully presented to the Sorbonne committee his PhD thesis about “Determination of conjugated harmonic functions with some limit conditions, and their applications in hydrodynamics”. Returning to Romania, Caius Iacob had a long and successful career teaching mathematics and mechanics at the universities of Timişoara, Cluj and Bucharest. His most important work is considered the “Mathematical introduction to the mechanics of fluids”. This book, providing original ways to work with classical hydrodynamics and compressible-flow theory, was published in Romanian in 1952 and in French in 1959. In 1955, he was elected a Corresponding Member of the Romanian Academy, becoming a titular Member in 1963. He was also President of the Mathematics Section of the Romanian Academy from 1980 until the end of his life, in 1992. In 1991, he initiated the foundation of the “Romanian Academy Institute of Applied Mathematics”. In 2001 the institute merged with the “Centre for Mathematical Statistics”, which had been created in 1964 by mathematician Gheorghe Mihoc, thus creating the “Gheorghe Mihoc – Caius Iacob Institute of Mathematical Statistics and Applied Mathematics” of the Romanian Academy.