Norman Levinson
August 11, 1912 - October 10, 1975
|
Scientific Discipline: Mathematics Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1967)
|
Norman Levinson was a preeminent American mathematician who made fundamental contributions to complex function theory, analytic number theory, and linear and nonlinear ordinary and partial differential equations. Levinson was highly prolific—in all he had 124 publications, among which were three books—and he was inspiring to young mathematicians as well. He had 34 PhD students and at least 462 descendants.
Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, Levinson entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1929 and majored in electrical engineering. He received his BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering in 1934. While still an undergraduate he took almost all the graduate mathematics courses offered at MIT and wrote a thesis under Norbert Wiener. According to H. D. Phillips, the head of the mathematics department, this document had “results sufficient for a doctoral thesis of unusual excellence.” Thus Wiener and Phillips arranged for him to receive an MIT Redfield Proctor Traveling Fellowship and assured him that he would receive his doctorate at the end of his traveling year. Levinson used that time to work with mathematician G. H. Hardy in Cambridge, England. Upon his return to MIT in 1935, Levinson received his PhD degree for a thesis titled "Non-Vanishing of a Function". He was then awarded a National Research Council Fellowship for a two-year stay at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, with John von Neumann as his supervisor.
Aside from these and other brief sojourns, Levinson spent his whole academic career at MIT. He became an instructor in 1937, an assistant professor in 1939, an associate professor in 1944, a professor in 1949, and an Institute Professor in 1971. He served as department head from 1968 to 1971, but throughout his time at MIT Levinson played a leading role in transforming the mathematics department from a service orientation into an extremely strong research entity.
Shortly after his death, the faculty voted the following memorial resolution:
“Norman Levinson was the heart of mathematics at MIT, a man who combined creative intellect of the highest order with human compassion and unremitting devotion to science and to excellence in its pursuit. Throughout the mathematical world the name MIT and the name Norman Levinson have been synonymous for many years. For those of us who were fortunate to have him as a friend and colleague, this is entirely fitting, because we are aware that, with extraordinary effectiveness and caring, he devoted 46 years of his life to mathematics and this institute.”
