The Collected Papers of Cahit ARF

Cahit Arf was born in 1910 in Selanik(Thessaloniki) which was then a part of the Ottoman Empire. With the outbreak of the Balkan wars in 1912, his family migrated to Istanbul. In 1919 they went to Ankara, came back to Istanbul for a short period and finally settled in Izmir. Professor Arf recollects that his interest in mathematics was aroused during his school years in Izmir. Cahit Arf continued his education in Paris and graduate from Ecole Normale Superieure. Returning to Istanbul, he taught at the Galatasaray Lycee briefly and joined the Mathematics Department of Istanbul University. In 1937 Cahit Arf went to Göttingen for his doctorate which he completed in 1938. His supervisor was H. Hasse. 

        Cahit Arf returned to Istanbul University where he worked until 1962. During this period he spent one year as a visiting professor at the University of Maryland and was elected a corresponding member of the Mainz Academy. In 1963 he taught at Robert College in Istanbul. Between 1964 and 1966, Professor Arf was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. After visiting University of California, Berkeley for one year, he returned to Turkey in 1967 and joined the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. In 1980 he retired and lives now in Istanbul. 

Professor Arf played a prominent role in establishing the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey and served as its president for many years. From 1985 until 1989 he was the president of the Turkish Mathematical Society. Professor Arf received numerous awards and prizes for his contributions to mathematics and for his most distinguished career, among them the title doctor honoris causa from the Black Sea Technical University, Middle East Technical University and Istanbul Technical University. 

        Professor Arf has contributed to the education of many of the present day mathematicians in Turkey, not only by his lectures but also through illuminating discussions in conferences and seminars. Those who had the opportunity to come into close contact with Professor Arf, were deeply influenced by his sincere devotion to mathematics and to science in general. Especially for the young mathematicians, he has been a source of sound advice and generous encouragement. For a very brief description of Arf's approach to mathematics let us quote Professor Ikeda. 

        "To every problem, he has his own idea of approach. The characteristic of his approach is thoroughness; he always seeks invariants, and prefers explicit constructions rather than combination of existing theories. Once he determines his approach, he energetically tackles the problem and never gives up until he achieves his aim. If one studies Cahit Arf's works, which are full of originality and painstaking computations, one will surely wonder where Arf gets his inspirations, and how he gets insight into most complicated computations."

  T. Terzioglu