Solomon Marcus
Encyclopedia
Solomon Marcus is a Romania
n mathematician
, member of the Mathematical Section of the Romanian Academy
(a full member of the latter since 2001) and Emeritus Professor of the University of Bucharest
's Faculty of Mathematics. His main research is in the fields of mathematical analysis
, mathematical and computational linguistics
and computer science
, but he also published numerous papers on various cultural topics: poetics
, linguistics
, semiotics
, philosophy and history of science
and education.
, Romania
, he graduated from high school in 1944, and completed his studies at the University of Bucharest
's Faculty of Science, Department of Mathematics, in 1949. He obtained his PhD
in Mathematics in 1956, with a thesis on the Monotonic function
s of two variables
, written under the direction of Miron Nicolescu
. He was appointed Lecturer in 1955, Associate Professor in 1964, and became a Professor in 1966 (Emeritus in 1991).
Marcus has contributed to the following areas: 1) Mathematical Analysis, Set Theory, Measure and Integration Theory, and Topology; 2) Theoretical Computer Science; 3) Linguistics; 4) Poetics and Theory of Literature; 5) Semiotics;
6) Cultural Anthropology; 7) History and Philosophy of Science; 8) Education.
Marcus published about 50 books in Romanian
, English, French
, German
, Italian
, Spanish
, Russian
, Greek
, Hungarian
, Czech
, Serbo-Croatian
, and about 400 research articles in specialized journals in almost all European countries, in the United States
, Canada
, South America
, Japan
, India
, and New Zealand
among others; he is cited by
more than a thousand authors, including mathematicians, computer
scientists, linguists, literary researchers, semioticians,
anthropologists and philosophers.
Marcus wrote a paper together with Paul Erdős
("Sur la décomposition de l'espace euclidien en ensembles homogènes", Acta Math. Acad. Sci. Hungar 8 (1957), 443–452); this gives him an Erdős number
of 1.
He is recognised as one of the initiators of mathematical linguistics and of mathematical poetics, and has been a member of the editorial board of tens of international scientific journals covering
all his domains of interest.
Marcus is featured in People and Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science.
A collection of his papers in English followed by some interviews and a brief autobiography was published in 2007 as Words and Languages Everywhere.
The book "Meetings with Solomon Marcus" (Spandugino Publishing House, Bucharest, Romania, 2010, 1500 pages), edited by Lavinia Spandonide and Gheorghe Păun for Marcus 85th Birthday, includes recollections by several hundred people, from a large variety of scientific and cultural fields and 25 countries; it contains also a longer autobiography.
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n 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....
, member of the Mathematical Section of the Romanian Academy
Romanian Academy
The Romanian Academy is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 acting members who are elected for life....
(a full member of the latter since 2001) and Emeritus Professor of the University of Bucharest
University of Bucharest
The University of Bucharest , in Romania, is a university founded in 1864 by decree of Prince Alexander John Cuza to convert the former Saint Sava Academy into the current University of Bucharest.-Presentation:...
's Faculty of Mathematics. His main research is in the fields of mathematical analysis
Mathematical analysis
Mathematical analysis, which mathematicians refer to simply as analysis, has its beginnings in the rigorous formulation of infinitesimal calculus. It is a branch of pure mathematics that includes the theories of differentiation, integration and measure, limits, infinite series, and analytic functions...
, mathematical and computational linguistics
Computational linguistics
Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective....
and computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
, but he also published numerous papers on various cultural topics: poetics
Poetics
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory...
, linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, semiotics
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
, philosophy and history of science
History of science
The history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....
and education.
Biography
Born in BacăuBacau
Bacău is the main city in Bacău County, Romania. It covers a land surface of 43 km², and, as of January 1, 2009, has an estimated population of 177,087. The city is situated in the historical region of Moldavia, at the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, and on the Bistriţa River...
, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, he graduated from high school in 1944, and completed his studies at the University of Bucharest
University of Bucharest
The University of Bucharest , in Romania, is a university founded in 1864 by decree of Prince Alexander John Cuza to convert the former Saint Sava Academy into the current University of Bucharest.-Presentation:...
's Faculty of Science, Department of Mathematics, in 1949. He obtained his PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in Mathematics in 1956, with a thesis on the Monotonic function
Monotonic function
In mathematics, a monotonic function is a function that preserves the given order. This concept first arose in calculus, and was later generalized to the more abstract setting of order theory....
s of two variables
Variable (mathematics)
In mathematics, a variable is a value that may change within the scope of a given problem or set of operations. In contrast, a constant is a value that remains unchanged, though often unknown or undetermined. The concepts of constants and variables are fundamental to many areas of mathematics and...
, written under the direction of Miron Nicolescu
Miron Nicolescu
Miron Nicolescu was a Romanian mathematician.Born in Giurgiu, he attended the Matei Basarab high school in Bucharest. After completing his undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Bucharest in 1924, he went to Paris, where he enrolled at the École Normale...
. He was appointed Lecturer in 1955, Associate Professor in 1964, and became a Professor in 1966 (Emeritus in 1991).
Marcus has contributed to the following areas: 1) Mathematical Analysis, Set Theory, Measure and Integration Theory, and Topology; 2) Theoretical Computer Science; 3) Linguistics; 4) Poetics and Theory of Literature; 5) Semiotics;
6) Cultural Anthropology; 7) History and Philosophy of Science; 8) Education.
Marcus published about 50 books in Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, English, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian language
Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
, and about 400 research articles in specialized journals in almost all European countries, in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, and New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
among others; he is cited by
more than a thousand authors, including mathematicians, computer
scientists, linguists, literary researchers, semioticians,
anthropologists and philosophers.
Marcus wrote a paper together 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...
("Sur la décomposition de l'espace euclidien en ensembles homogènes", Acta Math. Acad. Sci. Hungar 8 (1957), 443–452); this gives him an Erdős number
Erdos number
The Erdős number describes the "collaborative distance" between a person and mathematician Paul Erdős, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers.The same principle has been proposed for other eminent persons in other fields.- Overview :...
of 1.
He is recognised as one of the initiators of mathematical linguistics and of mathematical poetics, and has been a member of the editorial board of tens of international scientific journals covering
all his domains of interest.
Marcus is featured in People and Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science.
A collection of his papers in English followed by some interviews and a brief autobiography was published in 2007 as Words and Languages Everywhere.
The book "Meetings with Solomon Marcus" (Spandugino Publishing House, Bucharest, Romania, 2010, 1500 pages), edited by Lavinia Spandonide and Gheorghe Păun for Marcus 85th Birthday, includes recollections by several hundred people, from a large variety of scientific and cultural fields and 25 countries; it contains also a longer autobiography.
External links
- Solomon Marcus at the University of Bucharest