24 Facts About Paul Nemenyi

Paul Felix Nemenyi was a Hungarian mathematician and physicist who specialized in continuum mechanics.

Paul Nemenyi was known for using what he called the inverse or semi-inverse approach, which applied vector field analysis, to obtain numerous exact solutions of the nonlinear equations of gas dynamics, many of them representing rotational flows of nonuniform total energy.

Paul Nemenyi was the father of the statistician Peter Nemenyi and the putative father of former World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer.

Paul Nemenyi was born to a wealthy Hungarian-Jewish family on June 5,1895, in Fiume in the Kingdom of Hungary.

Paul Nemenyi obtained his doctorate in mathematics in Berlin in 1922 and was appointed a lecturer in fluid dynamics at the Technical University of Berlin.

In Germany, Paul Nemenyi belonged to a Socialist party called the ISK, which believed that truth could be arrived at through neo-Kantian Socratic principles.

Paul Nemenyi was an animal-rights supporter and refused to wear anything made of wool.

In 1930, Paul Nemenyi entrusted his 3 year old first son, Peter Paul Nemenyi, to be looked after by the socialist vegetarian community, visiting him once a year.

Paul Nemenyi arrived in the US at the outbreak of World War II.

Paul Nemenyi briefly held a number of teaching positions in succession and took part in hydraulic research at the State University of Iowa.

Paul Nemenyi told me that he thought this was a country of freedom, and the man is only judged according to his internal values and not his external appearance.

In 1947 Paul Nemenyi was appointed a physicist with the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, White Oak, Maryland.

Paul Nemenyi was head of the Theoretical Mechanics Section at the laboratory and one of the country's principal authorities on elasticity and fluid dynamics.

At the US Navy Research Laboratory, Paul Nemenyi became mentor to Jerald Ericksen, where he put Ericksen to work on the study of water bells.

Paul Nemenyi pioneered what he called the inverse or semi-inverse approach, which applied vector field analysis, to obtain numerous exact solutions of the nonlinear equations of gas dynamics, many of them representing rotational flows of nonuniform total energy.

In continuum mechanics, "Paul Nemenyi's theorem" proves that, given any net of isothermal curves, there exists a five parameter family of plane stress systems for which these curves are stress trajectories.

For example, Paul Nemenyi is the only author I have encountered who has shown the weakness of Newton's "proof" at the end of Book 2, that vortices contradict the laws of astronomy.

Paul Nemenyi has been described as having "extreme[ly] versatile interests and erudition".

Paul Nemenyi collected children's art and sometimes lectured upon it.

Paul Nemenyi was deeply interested in the philosophy of mathematics and mathematical education.

Paul Nemenyi translated David Hilbert and Stefan Cohn-Vossen's Anschauliche Geometrie into English, giving it the title Geometry and the Imagination.

Paul Nemenyi died on March 1,1952, at the age of 56.

Paul Nemenyi was survived officially by one son: Peter Nemenyi, then a student of mathematics at Princeton University.

In 2002 Paul Nemenyi was identified as the probable biological father of world chess champion Bobby Fischer, not the man named on Fischer's birth certificate.