Robert Davis Richtmyer (October 10, 1910 – September 24, 2003) was an American physicist, mathematician, educator, author, and musician.

Biography

Richtmyer was born on October 10, 1910 in

Ithaca, New York Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named af ...

. His father was physicist Floyd K. Richtmyer (1881–1939) and mother was Bernice Davis Richtmyer. He studied

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which relat ...

at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded i ...

and

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 teac ...

, graduating in 1932 when his father was dean of the graduate school. He received a Ph.D. from 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 m ...

in 1935 under advisor John C. Slater. He taught at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

as an instructor in the physics department from 1936 through 1940. During World War II he worked at

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in ...

, and became the leader of the theoretical division after the war. A letter sent March 11, 1947, from

John von Neumann John von Neumann (; hu, Neumann János Lajos, ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as having perhaps the widest cove ...

to Richtmyer outlined a technique for approximating complex problems being studied at Los Alamos by

Stanislaw Ulam Stanisław Marcin Ulam (; 13 April 1909 – 13 May 1984) was a Polish-American scientist in the fields of mathematics and nuclear physics. He participated in the Manhattan Project, originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapon ...

. Richtmyer used the massive

IBM SSEC The IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) was an electromechanical computer built by IBM. Its design was started in late 1944 and it operated from January 1948 to August 1952. It had many of the features of a stored-program computer, ...

calculator for some of the first large-scale uses of what would be called the

Monte Carlo method Monte Carlo methods, or Monte Carlo experiments, are a broad class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to obtain numerical results. The underlying concept is to use randomness to solve problems that might be determin ...

. In 1953 Richtmyer joined the faculty of

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU), and is among the most prestigious mathematics schools and mathematical sciences research cente ...

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, t ...

. In 1956 he published a paper with

Peter Lax Peter David Lax (born Lax Péter Dávid; 1 May 1926) is a Hungarian-born American mathematician and Abel Prize laureate working in the areas of pure and applied mathematics. Lax has made important contributions to integrable systems, fluid dy ...

proving the Lax–Richtmyer equivalence theorem. It is sometimes called the fundamental theorem of

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

. Starting in 1964, he taught mathematics and

at the

University of Colorado at Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado syst ...

until his retirement in the early 1980s. He was the author of textbooks including ''Principles of Advanced Mathematical Physics'' in 1978. In 1990 he was awarded the

Leroy P. Steele Prize The Leroy P. Steele Prizes are awarded every year by the American Mathematical Society, for distinguished research work and writing in the field of mathematics. Since 1993, there has been a formal division into three categories. The prizes have ...

from the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

for his book ''Difference Methods for Initial-Value Problems''. He also played

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

with the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra. Richtmyer died on September 24, 2003 in

Gardner, Colorado Gardner is a census-designated place (CDP) and post office in and governed by Huerfano County, Colorado, United States. The Gardner post office has the ZIP Code 81040. At the United States Census 2020, the population of the Gardner CDP was 106 ...

. He was survived by daughters Anna Degen and Roberta Cookingham. An adopted son, Haile Michael Mezghebe (born 1948), is a physician at the George Washington University Medical Center who helped start the first postgraduate medical education program in his native

Eritrea Eritrea ( ; ti, ኤርትራ, Ertra, ; ar, إرتريا, ʾIritriyā), officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of Eastern Africa, with its capital and largest city at Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia i ...

Works

* J. VonNeumann, R. D. Richtmyer (1950). A Method for the Numerical Calculation of Hydrodynamic Shocks. Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 21, No. 3., pp. 232–237.(Classic article on the numerical solution of hydrodynamic problems) * R. D. Richtmyer (1960). "Taylor instability in a shock acceleration of compressible fluids", Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 13, 297–319. (Predicted the

Richtmyer–Meshkov instability The Richtmyer–Meshkov instability (RMI) occurs when two fluids of different density are impulsively accelerated. Normally this is by the passage of a shock wave. The development of the instability begins with small amplitude perturbations which ...

) * R. D. Richtmyer and K. W. Morton (1967). ''Difference Methods for Initial-Value Problems''. Second edition. Wiley-Interscience. * R. D. Richtmyer (1967). Stability of a New Radio Flash Code. Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, NM (LA-3864-MS). * R. D. Richtmyer (1978), ''Principles of Advanced Mathematical Physics'' Vol. 1 & 2, Springer-Verlag, New York.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Richtmyer, Robert D. 1910 births 2003 deaths 20th-century American physicists 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Fluid dynamicists Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences faculty Scientists from Ithaca, New York Mathematicians from New York (state) Fellows of the American Physical Society

Biography

Works

See also

References