ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Kurt Otto Friedrichs

Kurt Otto Friedrichs was a very smart man who lived a long time ago. He was born in 1901 and lived until 1982. He was a mathematician, which means he really liked numbers and figuring out hard problems.

Kurt Otto Friedrichs studied math for a long time and eventually became a professor. He taught math to lots of other really smart people and helped them learn how to solve problems with numbers.

One cool thing that Kurt Otto Friedrichs did was figure out a way to describe waves using math. Waves are like the ups and downs of the ocean, but they can also happen in sound and light. By using math, he was able to figure out how waves move and change over time.

Another cool thing that Kurt Otto Friedrichs did was help create something called the “Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy condition”. This is a way of describing how to solve really hard math problems that have to do with waves. It's kind of like a recipe for solving a problem.

Overall, Kurt Otto Friedrichs was a really smart math teacher who figured out some really important things about waves and how to solve problems using math.