Rolf nevanlinna biography of alberta

Biography

Rolf Nevanlinna's parents were Otto Wilhelm Neovius and Margarete Romberg who spoke both Swedish and Finnish. Of course this immediately prompts the question of where the name Nevanlinna came from since his father's name was Neovius. In fact Rolf Nevanlinna was known as Rolf Neovius for the first ten years of his life, only becoming Nevanlinna in 1906 when his father Otto changed the family name.

ROLF NEVANLINNA

Otto, born in 1867, came from a mathematical family and studied mathematics, physics and astronomy at Helsinki University. After obtaining a doctorate in physics he studied with the astronomer Herman Romberg at Pulkova Observatory and married Romberg's daughter Margarete in 1892. They settled in Joensuu where Otto taught physics, and there their four children were born: Frithiof (born 1894), Rolf (the subject of this biography, born 1895), Anna (born 1896) and Erik (born 1901).

Frithiof also became a mathematician and he collaborated with Rolf on a number of publications which