乔治·波利亚

乔治·波利亚（英语：George Pólya，/ˈpoʊljə/，常缩写作G. Pólya；匈牙利语：Pólya György, 发音：[ˈpoːjɒ ˈɟørɟ]，1887年12月13日—1985年9月7日），匈牙利原语名波尧·哲尔吉（匈牙利语：Pólya György，匈牙利语发音：[ˈpoːjɒ ˈɟørɟ]），是一名匈牙利裔美国数学家和数学教育家。波利亚生于匈牙利布达佩斯，1940年移居美国，历任布朗大学和斯坦福大学教授。他在大量的数学范畴工作，包括级数、数论、组合数学和机率；他在1937年提出的波利亚计数定理，是组合数学的重要工具。同时，他长期从事数学教育，对数学思维的普遍规律有深入的研究。

著作

有关解题的著作：

《怎样解题》（How to Solve It）

《数学与猜想》（Mathematics and plausible reasoning）

《数学发现》（Mathematical discovery）

其他：

《数学分析中的问题和定理》（Problems and theorems in analysis）

《复变函数》（Complex variables，与Gordon Latta合写）

George Pólya (Hungarian: Pólya György [ˈpoːjɒ ˈɟørɟ]; December 13, 1887 – September 7, 1985) was a Hungarian-American mathematician. He was a professor of mathematics from 1914 to 1940 at ETH Zürich and from 1940 to 1953 at Stanford University. He made fundamental contributions to combinatorics, number theory, complex analysis, numerical analysis and probability theory. He is also noted for his work in heuristics and mathematics education. He has been described as one of The Martians, an informal category of Hungarian-American scientists that also included one of his most famous students, John von Neumann.

Life and works

Pólya was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, to Anna Deutsch and Jakab Pólya, Hungarian Jews who had converted to Christianity in 1886. Although his parents were religious and he was baptized into the Catholic Church upon birth, George eventually grew up to be an agnostic. He received a PhD under Lipót Fejér in 1912, at Eötvös Loránd University. He was a professor of mathematics from 1914 to 1940 at ETH Zürich in Switzerland and from 1940 to 1953 at Stanford University. He remained a professor emeritus at Stanford for the rest of his career, working on a range of mathematical topics, including series, number theory, mathematical analysis, geometry, algebra, combinatorics, and probability. He was invited to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians at Bologna in 1928, at Oslo in 1936 and at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1950. He continued lecturing part-time and publishing books into his nineties, decades after his official retirement in 1953.

On September 7, 1985, Pólya died at age 97 in Palo Alto, California, due to complications of a stroke he suffered during that summer. He was survived by his wife Stella, after 67 years of marriage.

Heuristics

Early in his career, Pólya wrote with Gábor Szegő two influential problem books, Problems and Theorems in Analysis (I: Series, Integral Calculus, Theory of Functions and II: Theory of Functions, Zeros, Polynomials, Determinants, Number Theory, Geometry). Later in his career, he spent considerable effort to identify systematic methods of problem solving to foster discovery and invention for students, teachers, and researchers. He wrote five books on the subject: How to Solve It, Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning (Volume I: Induction and Analogy in Mathematics, and Volume II: Patterns of Plausible Inference), and Mathematical Discovery: On Understanding, Learning, and Teaching Problem Solving (volumes 1 and 2).

In How to Solve It, Pólya provides general heuristics for solving a gamut of mathematical and non-mathematical problems. The book includes advice for teachers and a mini-encyclopedia of heuristic terms. It was translated into several languages and has sold over a million copies. The book is still used in mathematical education. Douglas Lenat's Automated Mathematician and Eurisko artificial intelligence programs were inspired by Pólya's work.

In addition to his works directly addressing problem solving, Pólya authored another short book called Mathematical Methods in Science edited by Leon Bowden, initially a 1963 work supported by the National Science Foundation, later revised in 1977. As Pólya notes in the preface, Bowden carefully followed a tape recording of a course that Pólya taught several times at Stanford, in order to put the book together. Pólya notes in the preface that "the following pages will be useful, yet they should not be regarded as a finished expression."