The Art of Teaching Math Stein Los Angeles Times
Elias M. Stein, Mathematician of Fluctuations, Is Expressionless at 87
Elias G. Stein, a mathematician who pioneered work in a field that was originally devised to depict the vibrations of strings merely that proved to have a wide range of applications, including charting the fluctuations of stock markets and gravitational waves, died on December. 23 at a hospital in Somerville, N.J. He was 87.
The cause was complications of lymphoma, his daughter, Karen, said.
Dr. Stein "had a knack of asking the right question," said Terence Tao, a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was a graduate student of his. "He had this great vision of where mathematics should go."
Dr. Stein's specialty was harmonic assay, which breaks mathematical functions into a spectrum of simple components. It has been known for a long fourth dimension that a musical annotation, for example, is a combination of pure harmonic tones. The basic techniques of harmonic analysis, devised centuries ago, were used to compute phenomena similar the orbits of planets, the vibrating of strings and the properties of radio signals.
Dr. Stein showed how a similar approach could exist applied to other problems and reveal hidden structures and patterns.
Instead of trying to compute exact solutions to a trouble — which tin can be a hopelessly arduous task — harmonic assay can often produce quicker simply still useful estimates. "It'due south a very unlike style of mathematics," Dr. Tao said in an interview. "He pushed this style of thinking."
Charles Fefferman, a mathematics professor at Princeton who was some other of Dr. Stein's graduate students, said some of Dr. Stein's early work developed central tools that later turned out to be useful in figuring out how to compress images and sound recordings.
Another equation that Dr. Stein studied has since been practical to the fluctuations in stock prices.
Elias Menachem Stein was built-in on Jan. 13, 1931, in Antwerp, Belgium. In 1940, when he was 9, German troops invaded Kingdom of belgium, and the Steins, who were Jewish, fled to the United States. Elias arrived with diamonds in the soles of his shoes; his father, a diamond merchant, had subconscious them in that location.
His family unit settled on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Elias'southward interest in mathematics was kindled at Stuyvesant High School. In an interview conducted for the Simons Foundation in 2012, he recalled that members of Stuyvesant's math guild had to practice two things. Ane was to read an avant-garde mathematics textbook. The other was to steal a math book from Barnes & Noble'southward flagship store at Fifth Avenue and 18th Street.
"That is something I did," Dr. Stein said. "As it turns out, it wasn't a very valuable book."
He pursued mathematics at the University of Chicago, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1951, a master'due south in 1953 and a doctorate in 1955.
Subsequently working every bit an instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Stein returned to the University of Chicago as an banana professor in 1958. In 1963 he moved to Princeton, where he spent the rest of his career. He retired in 2012, although he continued to teach classes.
He was a fellow member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received a National Medal of Science in 2002, bestowed past President George W. Bush.
In improver to his daughter, Dr. Stein is survived by his wife of 59 years, Elly Stein; a brother, Daniel; a son, Jeremy; and three grandchildren.
Throughout his career, Dr. Stein advised more than than 50 graduate students — a large number for a math professor. Two of his students, Dr. Tao and Dr. Fefferman, later won the Fields Medal, often considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics.
Dr. Tao marveled at Dr. Stein's well-constructed lectures. "Math lectures are often very dry," he said. "It's always definitions and theorems. He near fabricated it like an episodic TV show. Every hour had a setup, a skilful guy and a bad guy, and action, and the skilful guy wins at the cease."
Lillian Pierce, a mathematics professor at Duke, took a class taught by Dr. Stein during her freshman year at Princeton. It was a standard grade taken past mathematics majors about the underpinnings of calculus.
"It'due south really because I took that class from him that I made the jump to think, 'Ah, I think I desire to pursue mathematics in a higher place everything else,' " she said in an interview. "I then took all the courses that he taught during those four years."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/obituaries/elias-m-stein-dead.html
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