Oskar Perron

Oskar Perron
Perron in 1948
Photo courtesy MFO
Born(1880-05-07)7 May 1880
Died22 February 1975(1975-02-22) (aged 94)
NationalityGerman
Alma materUniversity of Munich
Known forPerron's paradox
Perron effect
Perron's formula
Perron integral
Perron method
Perron number
Perron tree
Perron's irreducibility criterion
Perron–Frobenius theorem
Moessner's theorem
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsUniversity of Heidelberg
University of Munich
Doctoral advisorFerdinand von Lindemann
Doctoral studentsHelmut Röhrl
Georgi Bradistilov

Oskar Perron (7 May 1880 – 22 February 1975) was a German mathematician.

He was a professor at the University of Heidelberg from 1914 to 1922 and at the University of Munich from 1922 to 1951. He made numerous contributions to differential equations and partial differential equations, including the Perron method to solve the Dirichlet problem for elliptic partial differential equations. He wrote an encyclopedic book on continued fractions Die Lehre von den Kettenbrüchen. He introduced Perron's paradox to illustrate the danger of assuming that the solution of an optimization problem exists:

Let N be the largest positive integer. If N > 1, then N2 > N, contradicting the definition of N. Hence N = 1.