Paul Nemenyi

Who was Paul Nemenyi?

Paul Felix Nemenyi was a Hungarian mathematician and physicist specializing in continuum mechanics. Nemenyi's mathematical research encompassed: continuum mechanics, fluid dynamics, hydrostatics, statistical mechanics, non-equilibrium thermodynamics and stress mechanics. Nemenyi was known for using what he called the inverse or semi-inverse approach, which applied vector field analysis, to obtain numerous exact solutions of the nonlinear equations of gas dynamics, many of them representing rotational flows of nonuniform total energy. In continuum mechanics, "Nemenyi's theorem" proves that, given any net of isothermal curves, there exists a five parameter family of plane stress systems for which these curves are stress trajectories. He was the father of the statistician Peter Nemenyi and probably the father of former World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer.