Hjalmar Mellin

Biography

Mellin studied at the University of Helsinki and later in Berlin under Karl Weierstrass. He is most noted as the developer of the integral transform known as the Mellin transform. He was appointed professor at the Polytechnic Institute in Helsinki that was to become Helsinki University of Technology, with Mellin as the first rector.

At the end of his career he is also known for his critical opposition to the theory of relativity. He published several papers in which he tried to argue against the theory of relativity mostly from a philosophical standpoint. In his private life he was known as an outspoken fennoman, that is, a proponent of adopting the Finnish language as language of state and culture instead of the Swedish one that had been mainly used up to that point in the Grand Duchy of Finland.