Gunnar Kangro

[1] Gunnar Kangro was born on November 21, 1913, in Tartu as the third and youngest child of a construction engineer and a building contractor.

Kangro returned to Estonia in autumn 1944, and from November onwards he started teaching at Tartu University.

In the 1950s, he laid the basis on systematic treatment of summability factors together with German mathematicians Alexander Peyerimhoff and Wolfgang Jurkat.

After the war Kangro had a great influence on modernizing the teaching of mathematics in Tartu State University.

His courses on algebra and mathematical analysis reflected the changes taking place in these areas in the first half of the 20th century: function theory of polynomials was replaced by abstract algebra, mathematical analysis was based on axiomatic methods and set theory.

Notable is his initiative in reorganization of mathematical higher education in University of Tartu in the 1960s in connection with increased need for computer experts.