Bernard Epstein

Bernard Epstein (10 August 1920, Harrison, New Jersey – 30 March 2005, Montgomery County, Maryland) was an American mathematician and physicist who wrote several widely used textbooks on mathematics.[1]

Bernard Epstein 1989

Epstein was the son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and Romania, and was the first person in his family to go to college. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics and physics from New York University and then in 1947 a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, with thesis advisor Maurice Heins, from Brown University with thesis Method for the Solution of the Dirichlet Problem for Certain Types of Domains.[2]

In the early 1940s, he worked as a physicist at what is now the National Institute of Standards and Technology. During World War II, he was selected to join the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bombs. After the war, he worked for two years at Harvard University as a research associate, taught mathematics as an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania,[3] Stanford University and NYU and as a professor at Yeshiva University [4] and then spent 21 years on the faculty of the University of New Mexico as a professor of mathematics until his retirement in 1984.[1]

Sabbaticals included Office of Naval Research, London; The Technion in Haifa, Israel; University of Maryland; and Air Force Office of Scientific Research. After retirement, he taught at George Mason University.[4]

Epstein was dissertation advisor for the following Ph.D. students:

  • Anne Scheerer, University of Pennsylvania, 1953 [2]
  • William Trench, University of Pennsylvania, 1958 [2]
  • Jack Minker, University of Pennsylvania, 1959 [2]
  • Edwin Sherry, Yeshiva University, 1964 [2]
  • Darrell L. Hicks, University of New Mexico [5]
  • Harvey Z. Senter, Yeshiva University [6]

Upon his death at age 84, he was survived by his wife, five children, and 16 grandchildren.[1] His sixth child, a daughter, predeceased him.

Partial Differential Equations

Selected publications

Articles
  • "Some inequalities relating to conformal mapping upon canonical slit-domains". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 53 (1947) 813–819. MR0022259
  • "A method for the solution of the Dirichlet problem for certain types of domains". Quart. of Appl. Math. 6 (1948) 301–317. JSTOR 43633676
  • with S. Bergman: Bergman, Stefan; Epstein, Bernard (1948). "Determination of a compressible fluid flow past an oval-shaped obstacle". J. Math. Phys. 26 (1–4): 195–222. doi:10.1002/sapm1947261195.[7]
  • with J. Lehner: Epstein, B.; Lehner, J. (1952). "On Ritt's representation of analytic functions as infinite products". J. London Math. Soc. 27: 30–37. doi:10.1112/jlms/s1-27.1.30.
  • with A. Scheerer: Epstein, Bernard; Scheerer, Anne (1956). "The existence of a generalized Green's function in the plane". Journal d'Analyse Mathématique. 4: 222–235. doi:10.1007/BF02787722.
  • with David S. Greenstein and Jack Minker: "An extremal problem with infinitely many interpolation conditions". Annals of Finnish Academy of Science (Soumalainen Tiedaekatamia Tomituksia), Series A:1 Mathematics 250/10, 1958.
  • with F. Haber:[8] Haber, F.; Epstein, B. (1958). "The parameters of nonlinear devices from harmonic measurements". IRE Transactions on Electron Devices. 5 (1): 26–38. Bibcode:1958ITED....5...26H. doi:10.1109/T-ED.1958.14324.
  • "The kernel function and conformal invariants", J. Math. Mech. 7 (1958).[9]
  • with I. J. Schoenberg. "On a conjecture concerning Schlicht functions". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 65 (1959) 273–275. MR0108588
  • with Jack Minker: "Extremal interpolatory problems in the unit disc". Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 11 (1960) 777–784. MR0118853
  • "On the mean-value property of harmonic functions". Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 13 (1962) 830. MR0140700
  • "A remark concerning the solution of the Dirichlet problem by finite differences". Math. Comp. 16 (1962) 110–112. MR0132199
  • with M. M. Schiffer: Epstein, Bernard; Schiffer, M. M. (1965). "On the mean-value property of harmonic functions". Journal d'Analyse Mathématique. 14 (1): 109–111. doi:10.1007/BF02806381.
  • Epstein, Bernard (1966). "On a difference equation arising in a learning-theory model". Israel J. Math. 4 (3): 145–152. doi:10.1007/BF02760073.
  • with H. Senter: Epstein, Bernard; Senter, Harvey (1967). "The three-dimensional Dirichlet problem associated with a plane lamina". J. Math. Phys. 46 (1–4): 425–439. doi:10.1002/sapm1967461425.
  • with J. Blum: Blum, J. R.; Epstein, Bernard (1971). "On the Fourier transforms of an interesting class of measures". Israel J. Math. 10 (3): 301–305. doi:10.1007/BF02771647.
  • "Infinite divisibility of Student's t-distribution". Sankhyā: The Indian Journal of Statistics, Series B (1977): 103–120. JSTOR 25052058

Books

References
  1. Washington Post obituary: Bernard Epstein, College Mathematics Professor, 83 (This obituary erroneously states that Professor Epstein died at age 83 instead of the correct age 84 and also mistakenly states the number of grandchildren as 17 rather than 16 )
  2. Bernard Epstein at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. "U. of Pennsylvania, Dept. of Mathematics, Tenured Faculty History: 1899 -". Archived from the original on 2016-03-06. Retrieved 2016-07-07.
  4. 3 April 2005, Washington Post death notice: EPSTEIN, Dr. BERNARD (Age 84)
  5. https://web.archive.org/web/20020207015024/http://www.math.mtu.edu/~dlhicks/Hicks.html
  6. Epstein, Bernard (1967). "The Three-Dimensional Dirichlet Problem Associated with a Plane Lamina". Journal of Mathematics and Physics. 46 (1–4): 425–439. doi:10.1002/sapm1967461425.
  7. Curtiss, John H. (1956). Numerical analysis. ISBN 9780821813065.
  8. EMC Society Founder Passes: Fred Haber 1921–2007, emsc.org
  9. Istratescu, V. I. (2012-12-06). Inner Product Structures: Theory and Applications. ISBN 9789400937130.
  10. Copson, E. T. "Book Review: Bernard Epstein, Partial Differential Equations—An Introduction (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1962), x+ 273 pp., 74s." Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society (Series 2) 13, no. 02 (1962): 193-193.
  11. https://www.amazon.com/Orthogonal-families-functions-Mathematics-paperbacks/dp/B0000CMR44
  12. https://www.amazon.com/Linear-Functional-Analysis-Introduction-Dimensional-Problems/dp/0721633951
  13. brief bio of Liang-shin Hahn, Complex Numbers and Geometry, p. 200
  14. Hahn, Liang-Shin; Epstein, Bernard (1996). Classical Complex Analysis. ISBN 086720494X.
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