Alston Scott Householder (5 May 1904 – 4 July 1993) was an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

who specialized in

mathematical biology Mathematical and theoretical biology, or biomathematics, is a branch of biology which employs theoretical analysis, mathematical models and abstractions of the living organisms to investigate the principles that govern the structure, development a ...

and

numerical analysis Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms that use numerical approximation (as opposed to symbolic computation, symbolic manipulations) for the problems of mathematical analysis (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). It is the study of ...

. He is the inventor of the

Householder transformation In linear algebra, a Householder transformation (also known as a Householder reflection or elementary reflector) is a linear transformation that describes a reflection about a plane or hyperplane containing the origin. The Householder transformati ...

and of

Householder's method In mathematics, and more specifically in numerical analysis, Householder's methods are a class of root-finding algorithms that are used for functions of one real variable with continuous derivatives up to some order . Each of these methods is chara ...

Career

Householder was born in

Rockford, Illinois Rockford is a city in Winnebago County, Illinois, located in the far northern part of the state. Situated on the banks of the Rock River, Rockford is the county seat of Winnebago County (a small portion of the city is located in Ogle County). ...

, USA. He received a BA in

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

from the

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

Evanston, Illinois Evanston ( ) is a city, suburb of Chicago. Located in Cook County, Illinois, United States, it is situated on the North Shore along Lake Michigan. Evanston is north of Downtown Chicago, bordered by Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, Wil ...

in 1925, and an MA, also in philosophy, from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

in 1927. He taught mathematics while preparing for his PhD, which was awarded at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in 1937. His thesis dealt with the topic of the

calculus of variations The calculus of variations (or Variational Calculus) is a field of mathematical analysis that uses variations, which are small changes in functions and functionals, to find maxima and minima of functionals: mappings from a set of functions t ...

. After receiving his doctorate, Householder concentrated on the field of

, working with several other researchers with

Nicolas Rashevsky Nicolas Rashevsky (November 9, 1899 – January 16, 1972) was an American theoretical physicist who was one of the pioneers of mathematical biology, and is also considered the father of mathematical biophysics and theoretical biology. Rober ...

at the University of Chicago. In 1946, Householder joined the Mathematics Division of the

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a U.S. multiprogram science and technology national laboratory sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and administered, managed, and operated by UT–Battelle as a federally funded research and ...

, where he was appointed chair in 1948; it is during this period that his interests shift toward

. In 1969 he left ORNL to become Professor of Mathematics at the

University of Tennessee The University of Tennessee (officially The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; or UT Knoxville; UTK; or UT) is a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee. Founded in 1794, two years before Tennessee became the 16th state, ...

, where he eventually became chairman. In 1974 he retired and went to live in Malibu, California. Householder contributed in different ways to the organisation of research. He was president of the

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific socie ...

(SIAM) and of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

(ACM). He was a member of the redactional committees for ''

Psychometrika ''Psychometrika'' is the official journal of the Psychometric Society, a professional body devoted to psychometrics and quantitative psychology. The journal covers quantitative methods for measurement and evaluation of human behavior, including ...

'', ''

Numerische Mathematik ''Numerische Mathematik'' is a peer-reviewed mathematics journal on numerical analysis. It was established in 1959 and is published by Springer Science+Business Media. The journal is indexed by ''Mathematical Reviews'' and Zentralblatt MATH. Its 20 ...

'', ''

Linear Algebra and Its Applications ''Linear Algebra and its Applications'' is a biweekly peer-reviewed mathematics journal published by Elsevier and covering matrix theory and finite-dimensional linear algebra. History The journal was established in January 1968 with A.J. Hoffma ...

'', and was editor in chief of the ''

SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis The ''SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis'' (SINUM; until 1965: ''Journal of the Society for Industrial & Applied Mathematics, Series B: Numerical Analysis'') is a peer-reviewed mathematical journal published by the Society for Industrial and Appl ...

''. He opened up his wide personal bibliography on

numerical linear algebra Numerical linear algebra, sometimes called applied linear algebra, is the study of how matrix operations can be used to create computer algorithms which efficiently and accurately provide approximate answers to questions in continuous mathematics. ...

in form of a KWIC index. He also organized the important ''Gatlinburg Conferences'', which are still held under the name ''Householder Symposia''.

Personal life

Householder spent his youth in

Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = "Alabama (state song), Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County, Al ...

. He was first married to Belle Householder (died 1975, children: John and Jackie) and remarried 1984 to Heidi Householder (née Vogg). He died in

Malibu, California Malibu ( ; es, Malibú; Chumash: ) is a beach city in the Santa Monica Mountains region of Los Angeles County, California, situated about west of Downtown Los Angeles. It is known for its Mediterranean climate and its strip of the Malibu ...

, USA in 1993.

Selected works

Discussion of a set of points in terms of their mutual distances
1938: pioneer paper in

multidimensional scaling Multidimensional scaling (MDS) is a means of visualizing the level of similarity of individual cases of a dataset. MDS is used to translate "information about the pairwise 'distances' among a set of n objects or individuals" into a configurati ...

References

External links

* *
Biography
by G. W. Stewart {{DEFAULTSORT:Householder, Alston Scott 1904 births 1993 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians Cornell University alumni Theoretical biologists Northwestern University alumni Numerical analysts Linear algebraists Oak Ridge National Laboratory people People from Rockford, Illinois Presidents of the Association for Computing Machinery University of Chicago alumni Presidents of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Mathematicians from Illinois