DOCSLIB.ORG

Regional Oral History Office University of California the Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Regional Oral History Office University of California the Bancroft Library Berkeley, California Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California David Blackwell AN ORAL HISTORY WITH DAVID BLACKWELL Interviews conducted by Nadine Wilmot in 2002 and 2003 Copyright © 2003 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ********************************* All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and David Blackwell, dated April 11, 2002. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: David Blackwell, “An Oral History with David Blackwell,” conducted by Nadine Wilmot in 2002 and 2003, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2003. Copy No. _______ TABLE OF CONTENTS—DAVID BLACKWELL Introduction by Albert H. Bowker i Interview History iii Interview 1: April 11, 2002 1 [Minidisc 1] 1 Early years and family in Centralia, Illinois 1 College years at University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana 8 Interview 2: April 18, 2002 17 [Minidisc 2] 17 More on early years in Centralia and undergraduate education 17 Graduate school with dissertation advisor Joseph Doob 22 Obtaining a Rosenwald fellowship and going to the Institute for Advanced Study 25 What is the meaning of denied access? 33 Looking for work 34 Teaching at Southern University and Clark Atlanta University 36 Interview 3: April 25, 2002 41 [Minidisc 3] 41 More on the Institute for Advanced Study 41 Howard University 43 Teaching and mathematics department faculty 46 Marriage and family 53 Interview 4: May 2, 2002 57 [Minidisc 4] 57 Howard University, curriculm and environment 57 Meeting Abe Girshick 62 Community of statisticians 66 Rao-Blackwell theorem 67 Bayesian approach 69 Summers at the Rand Corporation 72 More on Bayesian approach 75 Reviewing papers for favorites 77 Interview 5: May 9, 2002 81 [Minidisc 5] 81 The mathematical mind 81 An approach to mathematical activity 81 Dynamic programming and information theory 84 Lester Dubins 86 Working on information theory with Leo Breiman 88 Reviewing papers for favorites 90 Government funded research 95 Applied math versus pure math 97 Using computers in his work 97 Hugo Steinhaus 99 Interview 6: May 16, 2002 101 [Minidisc 6] 101 Playing games at Rand 101 Stanford statistical community in the early 1950s 102 Coming to Berkeley 106 Friendship with Jerzy Newman 108 Living in Berkeley 109 Berkeley’s department of statistics 110 Summer Statistics Program for Disadvantaged Students 114 Involvement in the Academic Senate 117 Afro-American Studies Committee Chair for two weeks 119 Free Speech Movement protests on campus 120 Military work 121 Family and social change 123 Living in London as director of the Study Aboard Program 123 Rouse Ball Lecture in London 124 Interview 7: May 23, 2002 127 [Minidisc 7] 127 Coming to Berkeley, education of children in Berkeley 127 Brown v. Board of Education 128 Other African American faculty at Berkeley in 1954 130 Perception of teaching as a profession in the African American community 132 Professional organizations for African American mathematicians 132 Changing race relations and identity 133 Friendship with Al Bowker 134 Photo and interactions with William Shockley 135 Awards and honors 137 Visiting Europe, ancestral math sites, Bayes and Doblin 138 Intuition and math 140 Graduate students 142 Music and math 144 More on Centralia and family 145 Northtown and Southtown 147 Grandchildren 149 Civil Rights Movement 150 Interview 8: September 11, 2002 153 [Minidisc 8] 153 Affirmative action at UC Berkeley 153 Howard versus UC Berkeley, a teaching institution versus a research institution 154 The roots of being anti-war 155 How having a family and children impacted professional choices 156 Interview 9: November 13, 2003, and Interview 10: January 29, 2003 inserted in text [Minidisc 9] i INTRODUCTION—David Blackwell It is a pleasure to be asked to write an introduction to David Blackwell’s oral history. I suppose I owe this invitation to the fact that I have known him longer than anyone else in the Berkeley community. During World War II, I worked with Abe Girshick in a military research group, and it was Abe who had interested David in mathematical statistics after his graduate work with J. L. Doob and his early papers in probability. Through Girshick I came to know of David. When we met in 1946, David was living in Washington D.C., where my parents also lived. My frequent visits to the city often included a meal at the Blackwell home, and I still remember in those early days driving with him from Washington to an Institute of Mathematical Statistics meeting at Cornell in 1946. In January of 1947 I accepted a position at Stanford, where I started to organize a separate department of statistics. (The mathematics department at Stanford, unlike the one in Berkeley, did not want to include statistics.) Girshick joined the department, and David became a frequent short-term visitor and also spent the 1950-1951 academic year in residence. During the 1950s he spent several summers at the Rand Corporation, and became acquainted with Kenneth Arrow, another early star in statistics at Stanford. His Berkeley connection was established when, in 1954, he came to Berkeley from Howard University as a visiting professor. The following year he accepted a position as Professor of Statistics. I had become chancellor at Berkeley in 1971, and this was a wonderful opportunity to renew our friendship. David has been an ideal faculty member. First and foremost, he is an excellent classroom performer. His classes have been both rigorous and popular, and he is also listed as the supervisor of nearly fifty PhD dissertations. He has done his share of administrative and committee work: a term as department chair, Director of California Study Abroad Center, Faculty Research Lecturer and chair of the committee to select others, and member of the committee that recommended my own appointment as chancellor. David’s recognition is not limited to his work as a teacher. He has done fundamental work in game theory, Bayesian inference, and information theory. He was a principal developer of Bellman’s dynamic programming ideas. He founded the theory of comparison of experiments, later developed by his colleague Lucien Le Cam to become one of the central tenets of mathematical statistics. With Arrow and Girshick he developed the backward induction method of solving sequential decision problems to solve the problem of determining Bayes solutions to such problems. He is the author of the classic book, Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions, along with some eighty papers in professional journals. Although I do not want to wander too far from his academic and scholarly contributions, I cannot refrain from mentioning at this point that in many ways in his career was deeply influenced by the fact that he is an African American who had to overcome great educational and professional obstacles. He grew up in modest circumstances in Centralia, Illinois, a home town of railroad employees. It is to the credit of his family and his teachers that they recognized his remarkable ability and encouraged him to seek higher education. He was accepted by the University of Illinois, although there was some reluctance to have him pursue advanced study there. After obtaining his doctorate and spending a year at the Institute for Advanced Study, he applied to traditionally black universities, teaching first at Southern University and Clark, before going to Howard and only much later to Berkeley. In fact, the first proposal to hire him at Berkeley was defeated on racist grounds. Despite the limitations that some tried to place on him, David has constantly forged ahead. I note that we are the same age, and he completed his PhD in 1941, the year that I graduated from college with all the ii privileges and encouragement that I accepted as a matter of course! Recognition has come to him over the years. He has served as president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the Bernoulli Society, and the International Association for Statistics in the Physical Sciences. He has given a number of prestigious named lectures, and has a dozen honorary degrees.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Strength in Numbers: the Rising of Academic Statistics Departments In
    Agresti · Meng Agresti Eds. Alan Agresti · Xiao-Li Meng Editors Strength in Numbers: The Rising of Academic Statistics DepartmentsStatistics in the U.S. Rising of Academic The in Numbers: Strength Statistics Departments in the U.S. Strength in Numbers: The Rising of Academic Statistics Departments in the U.S. Alan Agresti • Xiao-Li Meng Editors Strength in Numbers: The Rising of Academic Statistics Departments in the U.S. 123 Editors Alan Agresti Xiao-Li Meng Department of Statistics Department of Statistics University of Florida Harvard University Gainesville, FL Cambridge, MA USA USA ISBN 978-1-4614-3648-5 ISBN 978-1-4614-3649-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-3649-2 Springer New York Heidelberg Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2012942702 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer.
    [Show full text]
  • Bifurcated Equilibria and Magnetic Islands in Tokamaks and Stellarators
    Communications in Applied Mathematics and Computational Science Volume 1 No. 1 2006 BIFURCATED EQUILIBRIA AND MAGNETIC ISLANDS IN TOKAMAKS AND STELLARATORS PAUL R. GARABEDIAN mathematical sciences publishers 1 COMM. APP. MATH. AND COMP. SCI. Vol. 1, No. 1, 2006 BIFURCATED EQUILIBRIA AND MAGNETIC ISLANDS IN TOKAMAKS AND STELLARATORS PAUL R. GARABEDIAN The magnetohydrodynamic variational principle is employed to calculate equi- librium and stability of toroidal plasmas without two-dimensional symmetry. Differential equations are solved in a conservation form that describes force balance correctly across islands that are treated as discontinuities. The method is applied to both stellarators and tokamaks, and comparison with observations is favorable in both cases. Sometimes the solution of the equations turns out not to be unique, and there exist bifurcated equilibria that are nonlinearly stable when other theories predict linear instability. The calculations are consistent with recent measurements of high values of the pressure in stellarators. For tokamaks we compute three-dimensionally asymmetric solutions that are subject to axially symmetric boundary conditions. 1. Introduction A community of industrialized nations is planning construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). A facility has been designed to test the concept of fusing deuterium and tritium ions so as to form helium and release energetic neutrons that can produce electric power at commercially viable cost [1]. This is to be achieved by confining a very hot plasma of ions and electrons in a strong magnetic field with toroidal geometry and a major radius of 6m. The magnetic fusion configuration preferred for ITER is a tokamak, which is axially symmetric and requires net toroidal current for confinement of the plasma.
    [Show full text]
  • Computational Transonics
    COMPUTATIONAL TRANSONICS In honor of the sixtieth birthday of Paul Garabedian By Antony Jameson Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544 Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol. 41, 1988, pp. 507 549 − 1 Introduction This paper is written to commemorate the sixtieth birthday of Paul Garabedian. While Paul has made broad ranging contributions in mathematics, fluid dynamics and plasma physics, his work on computational aerodynamics had a very forceful impact at a critical juncture in the development of this subject. I believe that this work should be regarded as being very much in the tradition of classical applied aerodynamics. Airplanes fly by generating a well organized and carefully controlled flow over the lifting surfaces: consequently useful predictions do not necessarily require solution of full Navier Stokes equations, and can be accomplished with simplified mathematical models. The task of the applied mathematician is to identify a mathematical model which is relevant to the problem at hand and also amenable to solution. Viscous effects on full scale aircraft are essentially limited to a thin boundary layer which forms along the surface, and very little error is incurred by ignoring viscosity outside the boundary layer. Major advances were achieved in the course of the last century using the concept of an ideal fluid, both inviscid and incompressible, and this was the basis of a successful theory of airfoils and wings. As flight speeds increased to the point that the flow was dominated by compressibility effects, the focus moved to transonic flow, and it was in this field that Paul garabedian’s contributions were particularly significant.
    [Show full text]
  • The West Math Collection
    Anaheim Meetings Oanuary 9 -13) - Page 15 Notices of the American Mathematical Society January 1985, Issue 239 Volume 32, Number 1, Pages 1-144 Providence, Rhode Island USA ISSN 0002-9920 Calendar of AMS Meetings THIS CALENDAR lists all meetings which have been approved by the Council prior to the date this issue of the Notices was sent to the press. The summer and annual meetings are joint meetings of the Mathematical Association of America and the American Mathematical Society. The meeting dates which fall rather far in the future are subject to change; this is particularly true of meetings to which no numbers have yet been assigned. Programs of the meetings will appear in the issues indicated below. First and supplementary announcements of the meetings will have appeared in earlier issues. ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS presented at a meeting of the Society are published in the journal Abstracts of papers presented to the American Mathematical Society in the issue corresponding to that of the Notices which contains the program of the meeting. Abstracts should be submitted on special forms which are available in many departments of mathematics and from the office of the Society. Abstracts must be accompanied by the Sl5 processing charge. Abstracts of papers to be presented at the meeting must be received at the headquarters of the Society in Providence. Rhode Island. on or before the deadline given below for the meeting. Note that the deadline for abstracts for consideration for presentation at special sessions is usually three weeks earlier than that specified below. For additional information consult the meeting announcements and the list of organizers of special sessions.
    [Show full text]
  • Bifurcated Equilibria and Magnetic Islands in Tokamaks and Stellarators
    Communications in Applied Mathematics and Computational Science Volume 1 No. 1 2006 BIFURCATED EQUILIBRIA AND MAGNETIC ISLANDS IN TOKAMAKS AND STELLARATORS PAUL R. GARABEDIAN mathematical sciences publishers 1 COMM. APP. MATH. AND COMP. SCI. Vol. 1, No. 1, 2006 BIFURCATED EQUILIBRIA AND MAGNETIC ISLANDS IN TOKAMAKS AND STELLARATORS PAUL R. GARABEDIAN The magnetohydrodynamic variational principle is employed to calculate equi- librium and stability of toroidal plasmas without two-dimensional symmetry. Differential equations are solved in a conservation form that describes force balance correctly across islands that are treated as discontinuities. The method is applied to both stellarators and tokamaks, and comparison with observations is favorable in both cases. Sometimes the solution of the equations turns out not to be unique, and there exist bifurcated equilibria that are nonlinearly stable when other theories predict linear instability. The calculations are consistent with recent measurements of high values of the pressure in stellarators. For tokamaks we compute three-dimensionally asymmetric solutions that are subject to axially symmetric boundary conditions. 1. Introduction A community of industrialized nations is planning construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). A facility has been designed to test the concept of fusing deuterium and tritium ions so as to form helium and release energetic neutrons that can produce electric power at commercially viable cost [1]. This is to be achieved by confining a very hot plasma of ions and electrons in a strong magnetic field with toroidal geometry and a major radius of 6m. The magnetic fusion configuration preferred for ITER is a tokamak, which is axially symmetric and requires net toroidal current for confinement of the plasma.
    [Show full text]
  • Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition 1
    AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY LEROY P. S TEELE PRIZE FOR MATHEMATICAL EXPOSITION The Leroy P. Steele Prizes were established in 1970 in honor of George David Birk- hoff, William Fogg Osgood, and William Caspar Graustein and are endowed under the terms of a bequest from Leroy P. Steele. Prizes are awarded in up to three cate- gories. The following citation describes the award for Mathematical Exposition. Citation John B. Garnett An important development in harmonic analysis was the discovery, by C. Fefferman and E. Stein, in the early seventies, that the space of functions of bounded mean oscillation (BMO) can be realized as the limit of the Hardy spaces Hp as p tends to infinity. A crucial link in their proof is the use of “Carleson measure”—a quadratic norm condition introduced by Carleson in his famous proof of the “Corona” problem in complex analysis. In his book Bounded analytic functions (Pure and Applied Mathematics, 96, Academic Press, Inc. [Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers], New York-London, 1981, xvi+467 pp.), Garnett brings together these far-reaching ideas by adopting the techniques of singular integrals of the Calderón-Zygmund school and combining them with techniques in complex analysis. The book, which covers a wide range of beautiful topics in analysis, is extremely well organized and well written, with elegant, detailed proofs. The book has educated a whole generation of mathematicians with backgrounds in complex analysis and function algebras. It has had a great impact on the early careers of many leading analysts and has been widely adopted as a textbook for graduate courses and learning seminars in both the U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • Paul Roesel Garabedian (1927–2010)
    Paul Roesel Garabedian (1927–2010) Jerry L. Kazdan with Lars Ahlfors. Paul also benefited from many conversations with Max Schiffer, who was visiting Harvard’s applied mathematics department. This was the beginning of Paul’s important mathematical interaction with Schiffer—and a lifetime of work where complex analysis played a major role either for itself or as a key ingredient in applications. In 1948, after receiving his Ph.D., Paul was a National Research Council Fellow at Stanford. The following year he became an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley. One year later he simply resigned from the university before it became mandatory to sign the loyalty oath required of University of California faculty. Stanford immediately offered Paul a position. He flourished there: promoted to associate professor in 1952 and to professor in 1956. In 1959 Paul came to NYU’s Courant Institute. He was appointed the director of the Division of Computational Fluid Paul Garabedian, 2000. Dynamics at the Courant Institute in 1978. Paul remained a member of the NYU faculty for fifty-one years. Paul also often spoke fondly of his ten years Background at Stanford, maintained many friends there, and Mathematics was in Paul’s genes: both his father returned often to visit and give lectures. and his two uncles were mathematicians. Paul and The obituary published by the Courant Institute his sister, Caroline Coulon, were home schooled. [1] is a good source for more information. At age sixteen he was not admitted to Harvard because Paul’s father’s Ph.D. advisor, G. D.
    [Show full text]
  • Sixthchancellor00bowkrich.Pdf
    University of California Berkeley Regional Oral -History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California University History Series Albert H. Bowker SIXTH CHANCELLOR, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, 1971-1980; STATISTICIAN, AND NATIONAL LEADER IN THE POLICIES AND POLITICS OF HIGHER EDUCATION With an Introduction by Joseph L. Hodges Interviews Conducted by Harriet Nathan in 1991 Copyright 1995 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the Vest, and the Nation. Oral history is a modern research technique involving an interviewee and an informed interviewer in spontaneous conversation. The taped record is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The resulting manuscript is typed in final form, indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ************************************ All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Albert H. Bowker dated April 3, 1993. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley.
    [Show full text]
  • A Brief History of FLO22
    A Brief History of FLO22 John C. Vassberg Boeing Research & Technology Huntington Beach, CA 92647, USA JRV Symposium Four Decades of CFD: Looking Back and Moving Forward San Diego, CA 22-23 June, 2013 Vassberg, A Brief History of FLO22 1 OUTLINE • CONTRIBUTORS • BACKGROUND • FLO22 DEVELOPMENT • FLO22 APPLICATIONS • FLO22 IN A NUTSHELL • GRID GROWTH TREND • FLO22 REAL-TIME RUN Vassberg, A Brief History of FLO22 2 CONTRIBUTORS • Antony Jameson, Stanford University • David A. Caughey, Cornell University • Preston A. Henne, Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. • Dennis L. McDowell, The Boeing Company • Pradeep Raj, Lockheed-Martin Vassberg, A Brief History of FLO22 3 BACKGROUND • SEP 1966: Antony Jameson joins Grumann – Staff to Stu Harvie, Head of Flight Sciences – Antony’s First Task: Design a Wind Tunnel Grumann Aerodynamics Vassberg, A Brief History of FLO22 4 BACKGROUND • DEC 1969: Wings in Transonic Flow – Harvie-to-Jameson: ∗ We must do something about supercritical wings! ∗ We cannot rely on Whitcomb’s file for design! – Jameson: ∗ What is a supercritical wing? Vassberg, A Brief History of FLO22 5 BACKGROUND • JAN 1970: Aerospace Sciences Meeting, NYC – Jameson very interested in transonic flows – Drove to the ASM each day – Papers by Yoshihara and Murman ∗ AIAA Papers 70-47 and 70-188, respectively – Small crowd at Murman’s talk ∗ Garabedian & Jameson included – Grumann Aero dismisses Murman’s paper ∗ Not interested in a bi-circular airfoil – Jameson pushes to study Murman’s method – Grumann & Boeing team on the B-1 Vassberg, A Brief History
    [Show full text]
  • 75 Years the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University
    Celebrating 75 Years The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University Professor Louis Nirenberg, Deserving Winner of the First Chern Medal by M.L. Ball Fall / Winter 2010 8, No. 1 Volume Photo: Dan Creighton In this Issue: Leslie Greengard, Louis Nirenberg, Peter Lax, and Fang Hua Lin at a special celebration on October 25th. The Chern Medal, awarded every four years at the Interna- stated that “Nirenberg is one of the outstanding analysts and Professor Louis Nirenberg tional Congress of Mathematicians, is given to “an individual geometers of the 20th century, and his work has had a major Wins First Chern Medal 1–2 whose accomplishments warrant the highest level of recognition influence in the development of several areas of mathematics Research Highlights: for outstanding achievements in the field of mathematics.” 1 and their applications.” Denis Zorin 3 How marvelously fitting that Louis Nirenberg, a Professor When describing how it felt to receive this great honor, In Memoriam: Emeritus of the Courant Institute, would be the Medal’s first Nirenberg commented, “I don’t think of myself as one of the Paul Garabedian 4 recipient. top mathematicians, but I’m very touched that people say that. Alumna Christina Sormani 5–6 I was of course delighted – actually doubly delighted because Awarded jointly by the International Mathematical Union Chern was an old friend for many years, so it was a particular Alumni Spotlight: (IMU) and the Chern Medal Foundation, the Chern Medal pleasure for me. Most of his career was at Berkeley and I Anil Singh 6 was created in memory of the brilliant Chinese mathematician, spent a number of summers there.” Puzzle: Clever Danes 7 Shiing-Shen Chern.
    [Show full text]
  • Frances Bauer /3/02 059 Paul Garabedian David Korn
    (NASA-CR-155581) LECTURE NOTES IN ECONOMICS AND MATHEMATICAL SYSTEM. VO LUME 150: SUPERCRITICAL, RING SECTIONS 3 (New York Univ.) 184 p HC A09/MF A01 CSCL 01A/ 150 [ iancla s Frances Bauer /3/02 059 Paul Garabedian David Korn Supercritical Wing Sections III Springer-Veriag Berlin Heidelberg NewYork Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical' Systems (Vol. 1-15: Lecture Notes in Operations Research and Mathematical Economics, Vol. 16-59: Lecture Notes in Operations Research and Mathematical Systems) Vol 1 H Bdhimann, H Loeffel. E. Nievergeit, Einfuhrung in die Vol 30" H Nollemeer, Sensttivitatsanalyse beidiskreten Inearen Theone und Praxis der Entscheidung bei Unsicherheit 2. Auflage, Optimierungsproblemen VI, 102 Seiten 1970. IV,125 Seron 1969 Vol 31: M Kuhlmeyer, Die pichtzentrale t-Verterlung II,106 Se­ Vol 2. U N Shat, A Study of the Queueing Systems MJG/1 and ten 1970. GI/M1 VIII, 78 pages 1968 Vol.32 F Bartholomes und G Hotz, Homomorphismen und Re­ Vol. 3: A Strauss, An Introduction to Optimal Control Theory. dukhionen inearerSprachen XII, 143Seien 1970 DM 18,- Out of print Vol 33: K.Hinderer, Foundations of Non-stationary Dynamic Pro­ Vol 4: Branch andBound. EineEinffihrung 2,gendeleAuflage gramming with Discrete Time Parameter. VI, 160 pages 1970 Herausgegebea von F Weinberg Vii, 174 Saitan. 1073. Vol 34 H Stdrmer, Semi-Markoff-Prozesse-mit endlich vielen Vo[ 5: LR Hyvarinen,Information Theory forSystems Engineers Zustanden Theorie und Anwendungen VII. 128 Seiten 1970 -VII,205 pages-OS. Vol 35: F. Fersch, Markoyketten VI, 168 Seiten, 1970 Vol. 6: H P. Kunz, 0 Muller, E Nievergelt Einfiihrungskursus in die dynamische Programmierung IV, 103 Seten 1968 Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • Joseph B. Keller (1923–2016)
    COMMUNICATION Joseph B. Keller (1923–2016) Communicated by Stephen Kennedy assistant in the Columbia University Division of War Re- Editor’s Note: Alice S. Whittemore, George Papanico- search during 1944–1945. After receiving his PhD from laou, Donald S. Cohen, L. Mahadevan, and Bernard J. NYU in 1948, he joined the faculty there and participated Matkowsky have kindly contributed to this memorial in the building of the Courant Institute of Mathematical article. Sciences. In 1979, he joined Stanford University where he served as an active member of the departments of math- ematics and mechanical engineering. Alice S. Whittemore In 1974, when Joe was based at the Courant Institute, Joseph Bishop Keller was an ap- he was asked by Donald Thomsen, the founder of the SIAM plied mathematician of world Institute for Mathematics and Society (SIMS), to oversee renown, whose research inter- a SIMS transplant fellowship at NYU Medical Center. The ests spanned a wide range of mission of SIMS was to help research mathematicians topics, including wave propa- apply their training to societal problems by temporarily gation, semi-classical mechan- transplanting them from their theoretical academic en- ics, geophysical fluid dynamics, vironments to settings engaged with applied problems. operations research, finance, Joe agreed to Thomsen’s request and promptly arranged biomechanics, epidemiology, an initial meeting with the prospective transplant, me. biostatistics, and the math- My research goals were to explore biomedical problems ematics of sports. His work involving epidemiology and biostatistics, rather than combined a love of physics, the problems in group theory with which I had been mathematics, and natural phe- struggling.
    [Show full text]