Jurjen Ferdinand Koksma (April 21, 1904, Schoterland

Heerenveen

Heerenveen is a town in the Heerenveen municipality of the province of Friesland , in the north of the Netherlands.- History :The town was established in 1551 by three lords as a location for the purpose of digging peat which was used for fuel, hence the name...

 – December 17, 1964, Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

) was a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

 who specialized in analytic number theory

Analytic number theory

In mathematics, analytic number theory is a branch of number theory that uses methods from mathematical analysis to solve problems about the integers. It is often said to have begun with Dirichlet's introduction of Dirichlet L-functions to give the first proof of Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic...

.

Koksma received his Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 degree (cum laude) in 1930 at the University of Groningen

University of Groningen

The University of Groningen , located in the city of Groningen, was founded in 1614. It is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands as well as one of its largest. Since its inception more than 100,000 students have graduated...

 under supervision of Johannes van der Corput

Johannes van der Corput

Johannes Gualtherus van der Corput was a Dutch mathematician, working in the field of analytic number theory....

, with a thesis on Systems of Diophantine Inequalities.. Around the same time, aged 26, he was invited to become full professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Vrije Universiteit

The Vrije Universiteit is a university in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Dutch name is often abbreviated as VU and in English the university uses the name "VU University". The university is located on a compact urban campus in the southern part of Amsterdam in the Buitenveldert district...

. He accepted and in 1930 became the first professor in mathematics at this university. Koksma is also one of the founders of the Dutch Mathematisch Centrum (today Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica).

One of Koksma's main works was the book Diophantische Approximationen, published in 1936 by Springer.
He also wrote several papers with Paul Erdős

Paul Erdos

Paul Erdős was a Hungarian mathematician. Erdős published more papers than any other mathematician in history, working with hundreds of collaborators. He worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory...

.

Koksma had two brothers who were also mathematicians; Jan Koksma and Marten Koksma.

Literature

• Arie van Deursen: The distinctive character of the Free University in Amsterdam, 1880-2005, Eerdmans Publishing (2008).