Cornelius Lanczos
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.030887
It’s the birthday of Cornelius Lanczos, who was born in 1893 in Székesfehérvár, Hungary. Lanczos studied mathematics and physics at the University of Szeged. Three years after earning his PhD in 1921 he published his most famous result: an exact solution of Albert Einstein’s field equation for the case of the gravitational field generated by dust rotating about an axis of cylindrical symmetry. Willem van Stockum rediscovered the solution in 1937. Although the case is unlikely to arise in nature, Lanczos’s and Stockum’s solution is among the simplest. Lanczos made other contributions to mathematical physics, not least was his book The Variational Principles of Mechanics (1949), which was widely translated and remains available.
Date in History: 2 February 1893
