Tobias Dantzig
Tobias Dantzig (Template:IPAc-en; February 19, 1884 – August 9, 1956) was a Russian-American mathematician, the father of George Dantzig, and the author of Number: The Language of Science (A critical survey written for the cultured non-mathematician) (1930) and Aspects of Science (New York, Macmillan, 1937).
BiographyEdit
Born in Shavli<ref>Profiles in Operations Research: Pioneers and Innovators</ref><ref>T. Dantzig, Historian and Interpreter of Mathematics</ref> (then Imperial Russia, now Lithuania) into the family of Shmuel Dantzig (?-1940) and Guta Dimant (1863–1917), he grew up in Łódź and studied mathematics with Henri Poincaré in Paris.<ref name="mmp">Template:Citation.</ref> His brother Jacob (1891-1942) was murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust; he also had a brother Naftali (who lived in Moscow) and sister Emma.
Tobias married a fellow Sorbonne University student, Anja Ourisson, and the couple emigrated to the United States in 1910. He worked for a time as a lumberjack, road worker, and house painter in Oregon, until returning to academia at the encouragement of Reed College mathematician Frank Griffin.<ref name="mmp"/> Dantzig received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Indiana University Bloomington in 1917, while working as a professor there.<ref name="mmp"/><ref>Hosch WL Tobias Dantzig, Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition.</ref> He later taught at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and the University of Maryland, College Park.
Dantzig died in Los Angeles in 1956. He was the father of George Dantzig, a key figure in the development of linear programming.
Partial list of publicationsEdit
- Number: The Language of Science (1930);<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Template:Cite book
- Aspects of Science (1937)
- Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954)
- The Bequest of the Greeks (1955); Template:Cite book