Daniel Mark Lewin ( he, דניאל "דני" מארק לוין; May 14, 1970 – September 11, 2001), sometimes spelled Levin, was an American–Israeli
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
...
and
entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...
who co-founded internet company
Akamai Technologies
Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an American content delivery networkJ. Dilley, B. Maggs, J. Parikh, H. Prokop, R. Sitaraman, and B. Weihl. (CDN), cybersecurity, and cloud service company, providing web and Internet security services. Akamai's Inte ...
. A passenger on board
American Airlines Flight 11
American Airlines Flight 11 was a domestic passenger flight that was hijacked by five al-Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001 as part of the September 11 attacks. Lead hijacker Mohamed Atta deliberately crashed the plane into the North To ...
, it is believed that Lewin was stabbed to death by
Satam al-Suqami
Satam Muhammed Abdel Rahman al-Suqami ( ar, سطَّام السُّقامي, ) (June 28, 1976 – September 11, 2001) was a Saudi law student and one of five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11 as part of the September 11 attacks in 2001.
...
, one of the hijackers of that flight, and was the first victim of the
September 11 attacks.
Early life
Lewin was born May 14, 1970, in
Denver
Denver () is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Consolidated city and county, consolidated city and county, the List of capitals in the United States#State capital, capital, and List of municipalities in Colorado#, most populous city of th ...
, Colorado, and moved to
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 ...
with his parents at age 14 and was raised in Israel.
Career
Lewin served for four years in the
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; he, צְבָא הַהֲגָנָה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branch ...
(IDF) as an officer in
Sayeret Matkal
General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (formerly Unit 269 or Unit 262), more commonly known as Sayeret Matkal ( he, סיירת מטכ״ל) is the special reconnaissance unit (''sayeret'') of Israel's General Staff (''matkal''). It is the prime special ...
, one of the IDF's
special forces
Special forces and special operations forces (SOF) are military units trained to conduct special operations. NATO has defined special operations as "military activities conducted by specially designated, organized, selected, trained and eq ...
units.
[ Lewin earned the rank of captain.][
He attended the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in ]Haifa
Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropo ...
while simultaneously working at IBM's research laboratory in the city. While at IBM, he was responsible for developing the Genesys system, a processor verification tool that is used widely within IBM and in other companies such as Advanced Micro Devices
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufact ...
and SGS-Thomson
STMicroelectronics N.V. commonly referred as ST or STMicro is a Dutch multinational corporation and technology company of French-Italian origin headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva, Switzerland and listed on the French stock market. ST ...
.
Upon receiving a Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
and a Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years.
The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...
, summa cum laude
Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...
, in 1995, he traveled to Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...
, Massachusetts, to begin graduate studies toward a Ph.D at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...
(MIT) in 1996. While there, he and his advisor, Professor F. Thomson Leighton, came up with consistent hashing
In computer science, consistent hashing is a special kind of hashing technique such that when a hash table is resized, only n/m keys need to be remapped on average where n is the number of keys and m is the number of slots. In contrast, in most tra ...
, an innovative algorithm for optimizing Internet traffic. These algorithms became the basis for Akamai Technologies
Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an American content delivery networkJ. Dilley, B. Maggs, J. Parikh, H. Prokop, R. Sitaraman, and B. Weihl. (CDN), cybersecurity, and cloud service company, providing web and Internet security services. Akamai's Inte ...
, which the two founded in 1998.[ Lewin served as the company's chief technology officer and a board member, and achieved great wealth during the height of the Internet boom.
]
Death and legacy
Lewin was reportedly stabbed aboard American Airlines Flight 11
American Airlines Flight 11 was a domestic passenger flight that was hijacked by five al-Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001 as part of the September 11 attacks. Lead hijacker Mohamed Atta deliberately crashed the plane into the North To ...
as it was hijacked during the September 11 attacks. A 2001 FAA memo suggests he may have been stabbed by Satam al-Suqami
Satam Muhammed Abdel Rahman al-Suqami ( ar, سطَّام السُّقامي, ) (June 28, 1976 – September 11, 2001) was a Saudi law student and one of five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11 as part of the September 11 attacks in 2001.
...
after attempting to foil the hijacking. According to the memo, Lewin was seated in business class in seat 9B, close to hijackers Mohamed Atta
Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta ( ; ar, محمد محمد الأمير عوض السيد عطا ; September 1, 1968 – September 11, 2001) was an Egyptian hijacker and the ringleader of the September 11 attacks in 2001 in which f ...
, Abdulaziz al-Omari
Abdulaziz al-Omari ( ar, عبد العزيز العُمري, , also transliterated as Alomari or al-Umari; May 28, 1979 – September 11, 2001) was a Saudi terrorist who was one of five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11 as part of the Sep ...
and al-Suqami. It was first reported that he had been shot by al-Suqami, although the final draft of the memo dropped all references to gunfire. According to the 9/11 Commission
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up on November 27, 2002, "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks", includin ...
, Lewin was stabbed by one of the hijackers, probably Satam al-Suqami, who was seated directly behind him. Flight attendants on the plane who contacted airline officials from the plane reported that Lewin's throat was slashed, probably by the terrorist sitting behind him. The 9/11 Commission speculated that Lewin, who had served four years in the Israeli military, may have attempted to confront Atta or Omari, who had been seated in front of him, not knowing that al-Suqami was sitting just behind him. Lewin was identified as the first victim of the September 11 attacks.
Lewin, who was 31, was survived by his wife Anne and his two sons, Eitan and Itamar, who were aged five and eight at the time of the September 2001 attacks.
In July 2004, it was reported that Lewin's recovered remains had been identified.
After his death, the intersection of Main and Vassar Streets in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was renamed Danny Lewin Square in his honor.[ The award given to the best student-written paper at the ACM ]Symposium on Theory of Computing The Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC) is an academic conference in the field of theoretical computer science. STOC has been organized annually since 1969, typically in May or June; the conference is sponsored by the Association for ...
(STOC) was also named the Danny Lewin Best Student Paper Award, in his honor.[ In 2011, on the tenth anniversary of his death, Lewin's contributions to the Internet were memorialized by friends and colleagues.
At the National 9/11 Memorial, Lewin is memorialized at the North Pool, on Panel N-75.]
Lewin is the subject of the 2013 biography ''No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet'' by Molly Knight Raskin.
Awards
*1995 – Technion named him the year's Outstanding Student in Computer Engineering.
*1998 – Morris Joseph Levin Award for Best Masterworks Thesis Presentation at MIT.
References
External links
Consistent hashing for relieving hot spots on the world wide web
Akamai Technologies.
Ynetnews.
The Akamai Network: A Platform for High-Performance Internet Applications, Erik Nygren, Ramesh K. Sitaraman, and Jennifer Sun, ACM SIGOPS ''Operating Systems Review'', Vol. 44, No.3, July 2010.
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lewin, Daniel M.
American Airlines Flight 11 victims
1970 births
2001 deaths
American computer scientists
American emigrants to Israel
American terrorism victims
Murdered American Jews
IBM employees
Deaths by stabbing in New York (state)
Israeli computer scientists
Israeli terrorism victims
Businesspeople from Denver
Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni
Naturalized citizens of Israel
People from Cambridge, Massachusetts
Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in the United States
Israeli soldiers
Terrorism deaths in New York (state)
People murdered in New York City
Male murder victims
Israeli Jews
Burials at Sharon Memorial Park, Massachusetts
Akamai Technologies people