Michael Fekete

Michael (Mihály) Fekete (מיכאל פקטה; 19 July 1886 – 13 May 1957) was a Hungarian-Israeli mathematician.

Biography


Michael Fekete was born in Zenta, Austria-Hungary (today Senta, Serbia). He received his PhD in 1909 from the University of Budapest (later renamed Eötvös Loránd University). He studied under Lipót Fejér. After completing his PhD he switched to University of Göttingen, which was considered a mathematics hub. In 1914, he returned to the University of Budapest, where he attained the title of Privatdozent.

Fekete also worked as a private math tutor. Among his students was János Neumann. In 1922, Fekete published a paper together with Neumann on extremal polynomials, which was Neumann's first scientific paper. Fekete dedicated the majority of his scientific work to the transfinite diameter.

In 1928 Fekete immigrated to Mandate Palestine and was among the first instructors of the Institute of Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1929 he was promoted to professor, and eventually headed the institute, succeeding Edmund Landau and Adolf Abraham Halevi Fraenkel. He later became the dean of Natural Sciences, and between the years 1946–1948 he was Hebrew University Provost.

Among his students were Aryeh Dvoretzky and Michael Bahir Maschler.

Awards and recognition
In 1955, Fekete was awarded the Israel Prize for exact sciences.