Stefan Banach

Who was Stefan Banach?

Stefan Banach was a Polish mathematician. He is generally considered to have been one of the 20th century's most important and influential mathematicians. Banach was one of the founders of modern functional analysis and one of the original members of the Lwów School of Mathematics. His major work was the 1932 book, Théorie des opérations linéaires, the first monograph on the general theory of functional analysis.

Born in Kraków, Banach enrolled in the Henryk Sienkiewicz Gymnasium, a secondary school, and worked on mathematics problems with his friend Witold Wiłkosz. After graduating in 1910, Banach and Wiłkosz moved to Lwów. However, Banach returned to Kraków during World War I, and during this time he met and befriended Hugo Steinhaus. After Banach solved mathematical problems which Steinhaus considered difficult, he and Steinhaus published their first joint work. Along with several other mathematicians, Banach formed a society for mathematicians in 1919. In 1920, after Poland had in 1918 regained independence, Banach was given an assistantship at Jagiellonian University. He soon became a professor at the Lwów Polytechnic and a member of the Polish Academy of Learning. Later Banach organized the "Lwów School of Mathematics". Around 1929 he began writing Théorie des opérations linéaires.