George Birkhoff's forgotten manuscript and his programme for dynamics (Q6119137): Difference between revisions

Summary: In 1912 George Birkhoff created a sensation with his proof of Poincaré's so-called ``last geometric theorem.'' He followed it with prize-winning papers on ``The restricted problem of three bodies'' (1915) and ``Dynamical systems with two degrees of freedom'' (1917). Many of the essential ideas from these papers can be found in his book \textit{Dynamical Systems} (1927). At the end of the 1920s, Birkhoff began to draw up a programme of research on unsolved problems in dynamics, and in 1941 presented his ideas at the 50th anniversary celebration of the University of Chicago. Soon afterwards a summary of his lecture was published. At the time of his death in 1944, he left unfinished a manuscript of a revised and extended version of his lecture. In this paper I describe Birkhoff's work leading up to this manuscript before describing the contents of the manuscript itself. For the entire collection see [Zbl 07816361].