Michael Golomb (May 3, 1909 in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

– April 9, 2008) was an American

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 ...

and

educator A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...

who was affiliated with

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...

for over half a century. He was a student of

Erhard Schmidt Erhard Schmidt (13 January 1876 – 6 December 1959) was a Baltic German mathematician whose work significantly influenced the direction of mathematics in the twentieth century. Schmidt was born in Tartu (german: link=no, Dorpat), in the Govern ...

and Adolf Hammerstein, and received his doctorate from the

University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...

in 1933. However, as a Jew, he had to leave Germany shortly afterwards to avoid Nazi persecution. After a short period in

Zagreb Zagreb ( , , , ) is the capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Croatia#List of cities and towns, largest city of Croatia. It is in the Northern Croatia, northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slop ...

in the former

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...

, Michael Golomb arrived in the

U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

in 1939, when he turned to

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical s ...

. He was one of the first mathematicians to apply

normed vector space In mathematics, a normed vector space or normed space is a vector space over the real or complex numbers, on which a norm is defined. A norm is the formalization and the generalization to real vector spaces of the intuitive notion of "length" i ...

s in

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 taught mathematic

at

from 1942 until his retirement in 1975, at times holding joint appointment with the Schools of Engineering. He continued to teach as Professor Emeritus. In 1998 in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

, Michael Golomb was honored as part of a special exhibition entitled "Terror and Exile: Persecuted and expelled Berlin mathematicians in the time of the Nazi regime." The exhibition was organized by the city of

to coincide with the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be rename ...

there. Golomb co-authored a paper with Paul Erdös, and so has an Erdös number of one. Erdös, Paul; Golomb, Michael ''Functions which are symmetric about several points.'' Nieuw Arch. Wisk. (3) 3 (1955), 13–19.

References

External links

Obituary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Golomb, Michael 1909 births 2008 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians Scientists from Munich Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States Purdue University faculty