Professor Masatoshi Gündüz Ikeda: a life devoted to mathematics

Abstract

In the summer of 1963 as a new graduate I paid a visit to the newly established Mathematics Department of Ege University, in _Izmir, to apply for a post. In the very moments of my arrival, they introduced to me a young faculty member: Doctor Ikeda. Apparently he was Japanese, polite yet authoritative, and there was an air of general admiration about him; however the rest was a complete mystery for me. I complied with his suggestions and brought a few more documents to support my application, and thus completed the application process and joined the department. My rst duty there was to assist his lectures. However, this was not as easy as I had expected. One of his two courses was totally unfamiliar to me; the other one in turn was a course of which I covered much less as an undergraduate than had been taught by Dr. Ikeda. My ability to keep up with the subject was slowed by the fact that the books in Turkish or French I had access to were too few, causing me to consult desperately all the existing books thoroughly. The professor gave no credit for the clich e \az olsun ama tam olsun" (let it be little but complete) which is commonly used by lecturers as an excuse for covering limited teaching material...