In Memory of Jacob Schwartz
In Memory of Jacob Schwartz Sal Anastasio, Coordinating Editor —The outstanding contributions Jack had made to many fields and his ability to enter a field new to him, master it, make significant contributions, and move on. —Jack’s exceptional kindness and generosity. Eugenio Omodeo spoke of his “deep empathy with others”; Edmond Schonberg said that “his generosity had changed the lives of many;” and his sister, Judith, said that, to Jack, “acts of exceptional kindness were perfectly routine” and that his “stunning generosity…did not look for thanks” and “he was puzzled and even annoyed when they came.” —Finally, and in a lighter vein, Jack’s addiction to particular Chinese restaurants whose quality ranged from, at best, “mediocre,” to, at worst, “loathsome.” Jacob Theodore Schwartz was born on January 9, 1930, in the Bronx, New York City, of immigrant parents: his father, Ignatz, from Hungary, and his Photo courtesy of NYU Publicity for Courant. mother, Hedwig, from Germany. At every level of Jack Schwartz. his life, Jack was precocious. As a child he was an omnivorous reader. He attended Stuyvesant, a high school for gifted students. At age nineteen A few months after Jack Schwartz’s death on he graduated from the City College of New York (a producer of many Nobel Prize winners and March 2, 2009, a memorial gathering was held frequently called, at that time, “the poor man’s for him at the Courant Institute of New York Harvard”). While there, he studied with E. L. Post. University, his home base for almost fifty years. His friend and colleague Martin Davis recalls The well-planned program included a few piano that Jack interpreted one of Post’s remarks as pieces and almost a dozen speakers, each of whom expressing a need for a proof that all recursive had collaborated with Jack in one or more of his functions are Turing computable, and Jack sent many activities.
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