Max Shiffman Explained

Max Shiffman (30 October 1914, New York City – 2 July 2000, Hayward, California) was an American mathematician, specializing in the calculus of variations, partial differential equations,[1] and hydrodynamics.[2] He was a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1951–1952.[3]

Biography

Max Shiffman graduated with a bachelor's degree from City College of New York (CNNY)[1] and then graduated in 1938 with a Ph.D. from New York University (NYU). His thesis was entitled The Plateau Problem for Minimal Surfaces of Arbitrary Topological Structure[4] and his thesis advisor was Richard Courant. According to Peter Lax, Shiffman was "Courant's most brilliant student in America". Shiffman gave a one-hour address at a meeting of the American Mathematical Society. He was an instructor at CCNY in 1939–42. In 1942 at NYU he joined a research project funded by the Office of Scientific Research and Development. From 1945 to 1948 he was an associate professor at NYU, where he influenced many graduate students, including Clifford Gardner, Joe Keller, Martin Kruskal, Peter Lax, Cathleen Morawetz, and Louis Nirenberg. In 1948 Gábor Szegő hired Shiffman as a full professor at Stanford University.[1] Szegő also brought to the Stanford mathematics department Donald C. Spencer, Albert Charles Schaeffer, Paul Garabedian, and Richard E. Bellman.[5] Shiffman and Bellman introduced a number of modern mathematics courses at Stanford.[6] Shiffman was the first to teach at Stanford a course on functional analysis.[1] Merrill M. Flood's 1952 introduction to non-Soviet mathematicians of Kantorovich's 1939 paper Mathematical Methods of Organizing and Planning Production[7] is due to Shiffman in 1949.[8]

From 1965 to 1967 Shiffman held at Stanford a research appointment, mainly due to the efforts of Donald C. Spencer. At California State University, Hayward Shiffman was a full professor from 1967 to 1981, when he retired as professor emeritus.[1]

In the summer of 1949 Shiffman gave a new proof of von Neumann's minimax theorem[9] with a generalization to concave-convex functions.[10] Maurice Sion generalized Shiffman's result to Sion's minimax theorem, published in 1958.

In 1938 Bella Manel, a mathematics graduate student at NYU, married Max Shiffman. She received her PhD in 1939 with thesis advisor Richard Courant. Max and Bella Shiffman divorced in 1957,[11] [12] after the birth of their two sons. Upon his death Max Shiffman was survived by his sons, Bernard, a professor of mathematics, and David, an owner of an investment company, and by five grandchildren.[1]

Selected publications

References

  1. Lax, Peter D.. Peter Lax. Max Shiffman (1914–2000). December 2003. 1401. Notices of the AMS. (According to this article by Lax, "He gave an invited address ... at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Cambridge in 1950." This is wrong. Shiffman gave a Section Address entitled On variational analysis in the large. Shiffman's talk was officially approved but he was not an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1950 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. See the Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians: Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A., August 30–September 6, 1950, Volume 1.)
  2. Book: A Century of Mathematics in America, Part II. 9780821801307. Askey. Richard. 1988. 257.
  3. Web site: Max Shiffman. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
  4. 10.2307/2371631. 2371631. The Plateau Problem for Minimal Surfaces of Arbitrary Topological Structure. American Journal of Mathematics. 61. 4. 853–882. 1939. Shiffman. Max.
  5. Book: The Random Walks of George Polya. 9780883855287. Alexanderson. Gerald L.. 2000-04-27. 108.
  6. Book: Eye of the Hurricane. 9789814635707. Richard. Bellman. June 1984. 148.
  7. Kantorovich . L.V. . 1939 . Mathematical Methods of Organizing and Planning Production . Management Science . 6 . 4. 366–422 . 2627082. 10.1287/mnsc.6.4.366 .
  8. Book: Profiles in Operations Research: Pioneers and Innovators. 9781441962812. Assad. Arjang A.. Gass. Saul I.. 2011-06-28. 160.
  9. Shiffman, M.. On the equality min man=max min, and the theory of games. Rand Report RM-243. 1949.
  10. Book: Introduction to Matrix Analysis: Second Edition. 9780898713992. Bellman. Richard. December 1997. 313. p. 314
  11. Book: Green, Judy. LaDuke, Jeanne. Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhD's. p. 102. 2009. American Mathematical Soc.. 978-0-8218-4376-5. Pioneering Women in American Mathematics.
  12. Web site: Bella Manel Greenfield. Los Angeles Times Obituaries.

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