Felix Browder (1927–2016) Felix Browder received the National Medal of Science and served as president of the American Mathematical Society. For permission to reprint this article, please contact:
[email protected]. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/noti1757 1398 Notices of the AMS Volume 65, Number 11 Haïm Brezis, Guest Editor Felix Browder, mathematician shadowed by his father’s life as a Communist, dies at eighty-nine, The Washing- Felix Browder, who passed away exactly two years ago, ton Post, December 15, 2016, https://tinyurl.com was awarded the National Medal of Science by President /y9s7uhvh. Bill Clinton for “his pioneering work in nonlinear func- tional analysis and its applications to partial differential Photo Credit equations, and for leadership in the scientific commu- Opening photo of Felix Browder courtesy of Rutgers University. nity,…and in promoting science and math education for all.” Indeed, there were two Felix Browders! There was The Early Life of Felix Browder Felix, the solver of nonlinear problems, who made major Felix Earl Browder was born July 31, 1927 in Moscow, contributions to fixed point theory and was the leading Russia, and died December 10, 2016 in Princeton, New architect of the theory of monotone operators and its Jersey. His father, Earl Browder, an American political generalizations. Some of his ideas have been successfully activist, visited Russia in the 1920s as a representative used in tackling equations arising in real-world models. of the Communist Trade Unions in the United States. See below the descriptions of his research by former There, he met and married Raissa Berkmann, born in a student Roger D.