Kaplan, Wilfred

Wilfred Kaplan, professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan from 1940 to 1986, was born November 28, 1915 in Boston Massachusetts to Jacob and Anne Kaplan. He attended Harvard University, where he completed his A.B. Degree in 1936 and his Ph.D. degree in mathematics in 1939. Kaplan earned a Rogers Traveling Fellowship from Harvard University to study Mathematics in Europe during the 1936-1937 school terms. At ETH Zurich, in Zurich, Switzerland, he met Ida Roettinger in a mathematics course. He lovingly nicknamed her Heidi. The two were married in 1938. Professor Kaplan was an instructor at the College of William and Mary from 1939 to 1940, and came to the University of Michigan in 1940. He was promoted to assistant professor in 1944, to associate professor in 1950, and to full professor in 1956.

Professor Kaplan's early research was concerned with the topological behavior of the solutions of differential equations. His research interests turned to complex function theory and in 1955, he introduced and studied a class of schlicht functions, and showed that the Bieberbach conjecture held for that class of functions. At the time it was a major result and the full Bieberbach conjecture was not proven until thirty years later. His later research centered in applied mathematics and global analysis of analytical differential equations.

...