The Gamma Function by Emil Artin

The Gamma Function by Emil Artin

This brief monograph on the gamma function was designed by the author to fill what he perceived as a gap in the literature of mathematics, which often treated the gamma function in a manner he described as both sketchy and overly complicated. Author Emil Artin, one of the twentieth century's leading mathematicians, wrote in his Preface to this book, I feel that this monograph will help to show that the gamma function can be thought of as one of the elementary functions, and that all of its basic properties can be established using elementary methods of the calculus.
Generations of teachers and students have benefitted from Artin's masterly arguments and precise results. Suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of mathematics, his treatment examines functions, the Euler integrals and the Gauss formula, large values of x and the multiplication formula, the connection with sin x, applications to definite integrals, and other subjects.
Dover (2015) republication of the edition originally published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., New York, 1964.
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Emil Artin was born in Vienna in 1898. He studied under G. Herglotz and got his PhD at the University of Leizpig in 1921. In July 1923, Artin obtained the Venia legendi for mathematics at Hamburg University and was appointed Extraordinarius in 1925 and Ordinarius in 1926, at the age of 28. For eleven years, Artin directed the activities of the Mathematical Seminar of Hamburg University together with Hecke and Blaschkethe. In fall 1937, Artin emigrated to the United States of America with his wife and family, where he taught at Notre Dame University for a year, thereafter at Indiana University, Bloomington, from 1938 until 1946 and finally at Princeton University from 1946 until 1958. Starting in fall 1958, he taught at Hamburg University again. In 1962, he died in Hamburg.