Philip J. Davis (January 2, 1923 – March 14, 2018) was an American academic applied mathematician. Davis was born in

Lawrence, Massachusetts Lawrence is a city located in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, on the Merrimack River. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 89,143. Surrounding communities include Methuen to the north, Andover to the southwest, and Nort ...

. He was known for his work in numerical analysis and

approximation theory In mathematics, approximation theory is concerned with how function (mathematics), functions can best be approximation, approximated with simpler functions, and with quantitative property, quantitatively characterization (mathematics), characteri ...

, as well as his investigations in the history and philosophy of mathematics. He earned his degrees in mathematics from Harvard University (SB, 1943; PhD, 1950, advisor

Ralph P. Boas, Jr Ralph Philip Boas Jr. (August 8, 1912 – July 25, 1992) was a mathematician, teacher, and journal editor. He wrote over 200 papers, mainly in the fields of real and complex analysis.. Biography He was born in Walla Walla, Washington, the son ...

.), and his final position was Professor Emeritus at the Division of Applied Mathematics at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

. He served briefly in an aerodynamics research position in the Air Force in World War II before joining the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology). He became Chief of Numerical Analysis there and worked on the well-known Abramowitz and Stegun ''Handbook of Mathematical Functions'' before joining Brown in 1963. He was awarded the

Chauvenet Prize The Chauvenet Prize is the highest award for mathematical expository writing. It consists of a prize of $1,000 and a certificate, and is awarded yearly by the Mathematical Association of America in recognition of an outstanding expository article ...

for mathematical writing in 1963 for an article on the

gamma function In mathematics, the gamma function (represented by , the capital letter gamma from the Greek alphabet) is one commonly used extension of the factorial function to complex numbers. The gamma function is defined for all complex numbers except ...

, and won numerous other prizes, including being chosen to deliver the 1991 Hendrick Lectures of the MAA (which became the basis for his book ''Spirals: From Theodorus to Chaos''). He was a frequent invited lecturer and authored several books. Among the best known are '' The Mathematical Experience'' (with Reuben Hersh), a popular survey of modern mathematics and its history and

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 ...

; ''Methods of Numerical Integration'' (with Philip Rabinowitz), long the standard work on the subject of quadrature; and ''Interpolation and Approximation'', still an important reference in this area. For '' The Mathematical Experience'' (1981), Davis and Hersh won a National Book Award in Science."National Book Awards – 1983"
National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-07. This was the 1983 award for paperback Science.
From 1980 to 1983 in National Book Award history there were dual hardcover and paperback awards in most categories, and several nonfiction subcategories including General Nonfiction. Most of the paperback award-winners were reprints, including this one. Davis also wrote an autobiography, ''The Education of a Mathematician''; some of his other books include autobiographical sections as well. In addition, he published works of fiction. His best-known book outside the field of mathematics is ''The Thread: A Mathematical Yarn'' (1983, 2nd ed. 1989), which "has raised Digression into a literary form" (Gerard Piel); it takes off from the name of the Russian mathematician Tschebyscheff, and in the course of explaining why he insists on that "barbaric, Teutonic, non-standard orthography" (in the words of a reader of ''Interpolation and Approximation'' who wrote him to complain), he digresses in many amusing directions. Davis died on March 14, 2018, at the age of 95.

Publications (Books Only)

*Ancient Loons: Stories Pingree Told Me (2016) *Circulant matrices *Descartes' Dream: The World According to Mathematics by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh *Interpolation and approximation *Mathematical Encounters of the Second Kind *Mathematics & Common Sense: A Case of Creative Tension (2006) *Mathematics, Substance and Surmise: Views on the Meaning and Ontology of Mathematics by Ernest Davis and Philip J. Davis *Methods of numerical integration *Numerical Integration by Philip Davis, Philip J & Rabinowitz *Spirals: From Theodorus to Chaos *The Companion Guide to the Mathematical Experience: by Philip J. Davis and Reuben *The Education of a Mathematician (2000) *The Lore of Large Numbers (1975) *The Mathematical Experience (Modern Birkhäuser Classics) (2011) *The mathematics of matrices: A first book of matrix theory and linear algebra *The Schwarz Function and Its Applications ( Carus Mathematical Monographs #17) (1974) *The Thread: A Mathematical Yarn *Thomas Gray in Copenhagen: In Which the Philosopher Cat Meets the Ghost of Hans Christian Andersen (1995)
''Unity and Disunity and Other Mathematical Essays''
American Math Society, (2015)

Notes

References

External links

Personal web site
at Brown University.

at Brown University.

at SIAM *
Bibliography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, Philip J. 1923 births 2018 deaths People from Lawrence, Massachusetts 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Brown University faculty Harvard University alumni National Book Award winners Numerical analysts Writers from Massachusetts Mathematicians from Massachusetts American military personnel of World War II