# Mathematician:George David Birkhoff

## Mathematician

American mathematician best known for what is now known as the Ergodic Theorem.

The father of Garrett Birkhoff.

American

## History

• Born: 21 March 1884, Overisel, Michigan
• Died: 12 November 1944, Cambridge, Massachusetts

## Theorems and Definitions

Axioms named for George David Birkhoff can be found here.

## Publications

• July 1904: On the Integral Divisors of $a^n-b^n$ (Ann. Math. Vol. 5: 173 – 180) (with Harry Schultz Vandiverwww.jstor.org/stable/2007263
• 1906: General mean value and remainder theorems with applications to mechanical differentiation and quadrature
• 1907: Asymptotic Properties of Certain Ordinary Differential Equations with Applications to Boundary Value and Expansion Problems (PhD thesis)
• 1913: Proof of Poincaré's geometric theorem
• 1917: Dynamical Systems with Two Degrees of Freedom
• 1923: Relativity and Modern Physics (with R. E. Langer)
• 1927: Dynamical Systems
• 1931: Proof of the ergodic theorem
• 1932: A Set of Postulates for Plane Geometry (Based on Scale and Protractors)
• 1933: Aesthetic Measure
• 1937: Representability of Lie algebras and Lie groups by matrices
• 1938: Electricity as a Fluid
• 1941: Basic Geometry (which contains Birkhoff's Axioms)