André-Louis Cholesky | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 15 October 1875 |
| Died | 31 August 1918 (aged 42) Bagneux, France |
Cause of death | Killed in action |
| Alma mater | Ecole Polytechnique |
| Known for | Cholesky decomposition |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
André-Louis Cholesky (15 October 1875, in Montguyon – 31 August 1918, in Bagneux) was a French military officer, geodesist, and mathematician.
Life and scientific career
editCholesky was born in Montguyon, France. His paternal family was descended from the Cholewski family, which emigrated from Poland during the Great Emigration. He attended the lycée in Bordeaux and entered the École Polytechnique, where Camille Jordan and Henri Becquerel taught.[1] He worked in geodesy and cartography, and he was involved in the surveying of Crete (1907-1908) and North Africa before WWI.
Cholesky is primarily remembered for the development of a form of matrix decomposition known as the Cholesky decomposition, which he used in his surveying work. Specifically, he applied his decomposition to solve the normal equations arising in least squares problems.[2] By exploiting the special properties of the normal equations matrix (symmetry and positive-definiteness), this method requires fewer arithmetic operations than standard Gaussian elimination. This was a vital practical breakthrough for the era, as calculations were performed entirely by hand or with the aid of basic mechanical calculators.
Cholesky served in the French military as an artillery officer and was killed in battle a few months before the end of World War I; his discovery was published posthumously by his fellow officer Commandant Benoît in Bulletin Géodésique.[3]
References
edit- ^ O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "André-Louis Cholesky", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
- ^ Brezinski, Claude (2006). "The life and work of André Cholesky". Numerical Algorithms. 43 (3): 279–288. doi:10.1007/s11075-006-9059-x.
- ^ Benoît, Commandant (1924). "Note sur une méthode de résolution des équations normales provenant de l'application de la méthode des moindres carrés à un système d'équations linéaires en nombre inférieur à celui des inconnues (Procédé du Commandant Cholesky)". Bulletin Géodésique. 2: 67–77. doi:10.1007/BF03031308.
Further reading
edit- Brezinski, Claude; Tournès, Dominique (2014). André-Louis Cholesky: Mathematician, Topographer and Army Officer. Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-08135-9. ISBN 978-3-319-08134-2.
External links
edit- Bulletin de la SABIX, n°39, 2005, André-Louis Cholesky (in French)
- Cholesky's CV at the library of Ecole Polytechnique (in French)
- Claude Brezinski, Dominique Tournès, André-Louis Cholesky, Mathematician, Topographer and Army Officer, Birkhaeuser, 2014.
- Major Cholesky, obituary
- Sur la résolution numérique des systèmes d'équations linéaires, Cholesky 1910 manuscript, online and analyzed on BibNum (in French and English) [for English, click 'A télécharger']
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