Vojtěch Jarník

Vojtěch Jarník
Born(1897-12-22)22 December 1897
Died22 September 1970(1970-09-22) (aged 72)
NationalityCzechoslovakia
Known for
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsCharles University
Doctoral advisorKarel Petr
Other academic advisorsEdmund Landau
Doctoral students

Vojtěch Jarník (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvojcɛx ˈjarɲiːk]; 22 December 1897 – 22 September 1970) was a Czech mathematician. He worked for many years as a professor and administrator at Charles University, and helped found the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. He is the namesake of Jarník's algorithm for minimum spanning trees.

Jarník worked in number theory, mathematical analysis, and graph algorithms. He has been called "probably the first Czechoslovak mathematician whose scientific works received wide and lasting international response". As well as developing Jarník's algorithm, he found tight bounds on the number of lattice points on convex curves, studied the relationship between the Hausdorff dimension of sets of real numbers and how well they can be approximated by rational numbers, and investigated the properties of nowhere-differentiable functions.