Abraham Markham Gelbart (December 2, 1911 – September 7, 1994) was an American mathematician, the founding dean of the Belfer Graduate School of Science at

Yeshiva University Yeshiva University is a private Orthodox Jewish university with four campuses in New York City."About YU
on the Yeshiva Universi ...

and the namesake of the International Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences at

Bar-Ilan University Bar-Ilan University (BIU, he, אוניברסיטת בר-אילן, ''Universitat Bar-Ilan'') is a public research university in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan, Israel. Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is Israel's second-largest academi ...

Ramat Gan Ramat Gan ( he, רָמַת גַּן or , ) is a city in the Tel Aviv District of Israel, located east of the municipality of Tel Aviv and part of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. It is home to one of the world's major diamond exchanges, and man ...

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

...

Biography

Gelbart was born to a Polish immigrant family in Paterson, New Jersey. He dropped out of high school at age 14, but studied mathematics at the New York Public Library, where he came under the mentorship of Yeshiva mathematician

Jekuthiel Ginsburg Jekuthiel Ginsburg (1889–1957) was a professor of mathematics at Yeshiva University. He established the journal '' Scripta Mathematica''. He also was honored as a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences The New York Academy of Sciences ...

. Despite not having a high school diploma, he was accepted to Dalhousie University at age 23, and earned a bachelor's degree there in 1938. He did his graduate studies at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

, earning a doctorate in 1940 under the supervision of Norbert Wiener. After taking non-tenure-track positions at North Carolina State College, Brown University, and

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

's Langley Research Center, Gelbart took a faculty position at Syracuse University in 1943. He remained there until 1958, when he moved to Yeshiva, taking the position and the editorship of ''

Scripta Mathematica ''Scripta Mathematica'' was a quarterly journal published by Yeshiva University devoted to the philosophy, history, and expository treatment of mathematics. It was said to be, at its time, "the only mathematical magazine in the world edited by spe ...

'' both formerly held by his mentor Ginsburg. He retired from Yeshiva in 1979, and took a position as Distinguished Professor at

Bard College Bard College is a private liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic District—a National Historic Landmark. Founded in 1860, ...

, where he remained until 1992. He was also a trustee of Bar-Ilan university. His doctoral students include Robert Finn. Gelbart died from complications following cardiovascular surgery.

Mathematics

With

Lipman Bers Lipman Bers ( Latvian: ''Lipmans Berss''; May 22, 1914 – October 29, 1993) was a Latvian-American mathematician, born in Riga, who created the theory of pseudoanalytic functions and worked on Riemann surfaces and Kleinian groups. He was also ...

, Gelbart founded the theory of

pseudoanalytic function In mathematics, pseudoanalytic functions are functions introduced by that generalize analytic functions and satisfy a weakened form of the Cauchy–Riemann equations. Definitions Let z=x+iy and let \sigma(x,y)=\sigma(z) be a real-valued functi ...

s in fluid dynamics..

Awards and honors

Gelbart was given an honorary doctorate by Dalhousie University in 1972, and by Bar-Ilan University in 1985. In 1981, Bard College gave him the Bard Medal.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gelbart, Abraham 1911 births 1994 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians Dalhousie University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni People from Paterson, New Jersey Syracuse University faculty Yeshiva University faculty Mathematicians from New York (state)