Elias Menachem Stein, a towering figure in mathematics for over half a century, died on December 23. He was 87.
The cause of death was complications related to mantle cell lymphoma, according to his family.
Renowned for deep and highly original contributions to his field of mathematics as well as the mentor of generations of younger mathematicians, including two winners of the Fields Medal, the profession’s highest distinction. Mr. Stein was a professor at Princeton University for 55 years, teaching, by popular demand, until the age of 86.
Born on January 13, 1931 in Antwerp to Elkan Stein, a diamond merchant, and Chana Goldman, both Polish citizens, he and his family fled Belgium in 1940, following the German invasion. With diamonds hidden in the soles of his shoes as part of his father’s effort to protect the family’s assets, he entered the United States in April 1941 aboard the SS Nyassa from Lisbon, spending his first three weeks in the country living on Ellis Island. There he first witnessed boys playing “a strange game with sticks,” as he would later tell his children, something he would come to understand to be baseball, a sport he would admire for the rest of his life. It was the beginning of his fierce, if not uncritical, devotion to his adopted homeland, its strange new customs and, above all, the glorious intricacies of its democratic processes, which he monitored with what would become his signature intensity.
After his family settled on New York’s Upper West Side, he enrolled in Stuyvesant High School, where he was captain of the math team, graduating in 1949.
Stein attended college at the University of Chicago and stayed on to earn his PhD in 1955. Following teaching stints there and at MIT, where, among others, he befriended future Nobel Prize winner John Nash, turning, in a rare moment of professional overlap, to his father’s Diamond District connections to help Mr. Nash buy a ring for his future wife, according to Sylvia Nasar’s book, A Beautiful Mind.
Later, Mr. Stein spent an academic year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. While there, he was offered a tenured position at Princeton University, joining the faculty in 1963. For decades, he held an endowed chair as the Albert Baldwin Dod Professor; at the time of his death he was Professor Emeritus. He served twice as chair of the mathematics department.
Stein’s research was primarily in harmonic analysis — roughly speaking, the study of vibrations — a basic tool in science and technology. Mr. Stein discovered new phenomena and unsuspected connections between seemingly unrelated problems. His work led to a deeper understanding of topics as varied as sound recording, the stock market, and gravitational waves. As Charles Fefferman, one of Stein’s star doctoral students and later a colleague at Princeton, has noted of his former thesis advisor, “[his] work often combines two remarkable qualities: an understanding of several branches of math, each of which normally is known only by specialists, and an astonishing ability to find connections between them. Before Stein tells you his solution, the problems involved look utterly hopeless…. Then, with exactly the right point of view and exactly the right few words, … [his] incredible insights … link everything together.”
Stein is the author of several books, now considered classics in their field. In his 70s he devoted his time to creating a series of advanced undergraduate mathematics courses at Princeton and writing, in collaboration with former student Rami Shakarchi, a four-volume textbook to accompany the course. One reviewer of the first volume referred to Stein as “certainly one of the great avatars and developers of Fourier Analysis in modern times.”
He was a prolific author and generous collaborator. His many honors include the Schock Prize from the Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1993, the Wolf Prize in 1999, and the National Medal of Science awarded by President George W. Bush at a White House ceremony in 2002. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he received honorary degrees from Peking University in 1988 (after his effort to help rebuild the local mathematical community following the devastation of the Cultural Revolution), and from his alma mater, the University of Chicago, in 1992.
Stein is survived by Elly, his wife of 59 years; a brother, Daniel; a son, Jeremy, the Moise Y. Safra Professor of Economics at Harvard University and a member of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve from 2012-2014; a daughter, Karen, an architecture critic and former member of the jury of the Pritzker Architecture Prize; a daughter-in-law, Anne; and three grandchildren, Carolyn, Alison, and Jason.
As a collaborator and teacher, he was known for the clarity, elegance, and enthusiasm he brought to his research, writing, and teaching.
Stein dated his interest in science to a memory from when he was three years old, as he watched the spinning wheel of his father’s diamond polishing machine, believing he had discovered proof of perpetual motion. He soon came to understand that his so-called theory was a youthful illusion, but one that nonetheless propelled his lifelong view of mathematics as a brilliant balance of imagination and rational investigation. His interest in solving problems never waned. When he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Mathematical Society, with characteristic modesty his response focused not on himself but on the field he so loved, saying: “We can be confident that we are far from the end of this enterprise and that many exciting and wonderful theorems still await our discovery.”
"Town Topics" obituary
The cause of death was complications related to mantle cell lymphoma, according to his family.
Renowned for deep and highly original contributions to his field of mathematics as well as the mentor of generations of younger mathematicians, including two winners of the Fields Medal, the profession’s highest distinction. Mr. Stein was a professor at Princeton University for 55 years, teaching, by popular demand, until the age of 86.
Born on January 13, 1931 in Antwerp to Elkan Stein, a diamond merchant, and Chana Goldman, both Polish citizens, he and his family fled Belgium in 1940, following the German invasion. With diamonds hidden in the soles of his shoes as part of his father’s effort to protect the family’s assets, he entered the United States in April 1941 aboard the SS Nyassa from Lisbon, spending his first three weeks in the country living on Ellis Island. There he first witnessed boys playing “a strange game with sticks,” as he would later tell his children, something he would come to understand to be baseball, a sport he would admire for the rest of his life. It was the beginning of his fierce, if not uncritical, devotion to his adopted homeland, its strange new customs and, above all, the glorious intricacies of its democratic processes, which he monitored with what would become his signature intensity.
After his family settled on New York’s Upper West Side, he enrolled in Stuyvesant High School, where he was captain of the math team, graduating in 1949.
Stein attended college at the University of Chicago and stayed on to earn his PhD in 1955. Following teaching stints there and at MIT, where, among others, he befriended future Nobel Prize winner John Nash, turning, in a rare moment of professional overlap, to his father’s Diamond District connections to help Mr. Nash buy a ring for his future wife, according to Sylvia Nasar’s book, A Beautiful Mind.
Later, Mr. Stein spent an academic year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. While there, he was offered a tenured position at Princeton University, joining the faculty in 1963. For decades, he held an endowed chair as the Albert Baldwin Dod Professor; at the time of his death he was Professor Emeritus. He served twice as chair of the mathematics department.
Stein’s research was primarily in harmonic analysis — roughly speaking, the study of vibrations — a basic tool in science and technology. Mr. Stein discovered new phenomena and unsuspected connections between seemingly unrelated problems. His work led to a deeper understanding of topics as varied as sound recording, the stock market, and gravitational waves. As Charles Fefferman, one of Stein’s star doctoral students and later a colleague at Princeton, has noted of his former thesis advisor, “[his] work often combines two remarkable qualities: an understanding of several branches of math, each of which normally is known only by specialists, and an astonishing ability to find connections between them. Before Stein tells you his solution, the problems involved look utterly hopeless…. Then, with exactly the right point of view and exactly the right few words, … [his] incredible insights … link everything together.”
Stein is the author of several books, now considered classics in their field. In his 70s he devoted his time to creating a series of advanced undergraduate mathematics courses at Princeton and writing, in collaboration with former student Rami Shakarchi, a four-volume textbook to accompany the course. One reviewer of the first volume referred to Stein as “certainly one of the great avatars and developers of Fourier Analysis in modern times.”
He was a prolific author and generous collaborator. His many honors include the Schock Prize from the Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1993, the Wolf Prize in 1999, and the National Medal of Science awarded by President George W. Bush at a White House ceremony in 2002. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he received honorary degrees from Peking University in 1988 (after his effort to help rebuild the local mathematical community following the devastation of the Cultural Revolution), and from his alma mater, the University of Chicago, in 1992.
Stein is survived by Elly, his wife of 59 years; a brother, Daniel; a son, Jeremy, the Moise Y. Safra Professor of Economics at Harvard University and a member of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve from 2012-2014; a daughter, Karen, an architecture critic and former member of the jury of the Pritzker Architecture Prize; a daughter-in-law, Anne; and three grandchildren, Carolyn, Alison, and Jason.
As a collaborator and teacher, he was known for the clarity, elegance, and enthusiasm he brought to his research, writing, and teaching.
Stein dated his interest in science to a memory from when he was three years old, as he watched the spinning wheel of his father’s diamond polishing machine, believing he had discovered proof of perpetual motion. He soon came to understand that his so-called theory was a youthful illusion, but one that nonetheless propelled his lifelong view of mathematics as a brilliant balance of imagination and rational investigation. His interest in solving problems never waned. When he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Mathematical Society, with characteristic modesty his response focused not on himself but on the field he so loved, saying: “We can be confident that we are far from the end of this enterprise and that many exciting and wonderful theorems still await our discovery.”
"Town Topics" obituary
Elias Menachem Stein, a towering figure in mathematics for over half a century, died on December 23. He was 87.
The cause of death was complications related to mantle cell lymphoma, according to his family.
Renowned for deep and highly original contributions to his field of mathematics as well as the mentor of generations of younger mathematicians, including two winners of the Fields Medal, the profession’s highest distinction. Mr. Stein was a professor at Princeton University for 55 years, teaching, by popular demand, until the age of 86.
Born on January 13, 1931 in Antwerp to Elkan Stein, a diamond merchant, and Chana Goldman, both Polish citizens, he and his family fled Belgium in 1940, following the German invasion. With diamonds hidden in the soles of his shoes as part of his father’s effort to protect the family’s assets, he entered the United States in April 1941 aboard the SS Nyassa from Lisbon, spending his first three weeks in the country living on Ellis Island. There he first witnessed boys playing “a strange game with sticks,” as he would later tell his children, something he would come to understand to be baseball, a sport he would admire for the rest of his life. It was the beginning of his fierce, if not uncritical, devotion to his adopted homeland, its strange new customs and, above all, the glorious intricacies of its democratic processes, which he monitored with what would become his signature intensity.
After his family settled on New York’s Upper West Side, he enrolled in Stuyvesant High School, where he was captain of the math team, graduating in 1949.
Stein attended college at the University of Chicago and stayed on to earn his PhD in 1955. Following teaching stints there and at MIT, where, among others, he befriended future Nobel Prize winner John Nash, turning, in a rare moment of professional overlap, to his father’s Diamond District connections to help Mr. Nash buy a ring for his future wife, according to Sylvia Nasar’s book, A Beautiful Mind.
Later, Mr. Stein spent an academic year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. While there, he was offered a tenured position at Princeton University, joining the faculty in 1963. For decades, he held an endowed chair as the Albert Baldwin Dod Professor; at the time of his death he was Professor Emeritus. He served twice as chair of the mathematics department.
Stein’s research was primarily in harmonic analysis — roughly speaking, the study of vibrations — a basic tool in science and technology. Mr. Stein discovered new phenomena and unsuspected connections between seemingly unrelated problems. His work led to a deeper understanding of topics as varied as sound recording, the stock market, and gravitational waves. As Charles Fefferman, one of Stein’s star doctoral students and later a colleague at Princeton, has noted of his former thesis advisor, “[his] work often combines two remarkable qualities: an understanding of several branches of math, each of which normally is known only by specialists, and an astonishing ability to find connections between them. Before Stein tells you his solution, the problems involved look utterly hopeless…. Then, with exactly the right point of view and exactly the right few words, … [his] incredible insights … link everything together.”
Stein is the author of several books, now considered classics in their field. In his 70s he devoted his time to creating a series of advanced undergraduate mathematics courses at Princeton and writing, in collaboration with former student Rami Shakarchi, a four-volume textbook to accompany the course. One reviewer of the first volume referred to Stein as “certainly one of the great avatars and developers of Fourier Analysis in modern times.”
He was a prolific author and generous collaborator. His many honors include the Schock Prize from the Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1993, the Wolf Prize in 1999, and the National Medal of Science awarded by President George W. Bush at a White House ceremony in 2002. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he received honorary degrees from Peking University in 1988 (after his effort to help rebuild the local mathematical community following the devastation of the Cultural Revolution), and from his alma mater, the University of Chicago, in 1992.
Stein is survived by Elly, his wife of 59 years; a brother, Daniel; a son, Jeremy, the Moise Y. Safra Professor of Economics at Harvard University and a member of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve from 2012-2014; a daughter, Karen, an architecture critic and former member of the jury of the Pritzker Architecture Prize; a daughter-in-law, Anne; and three grandchildren, Carolyn, Alison, and Jason.
As a collaborator and teacher, he was known for the clarity, elegance, and enthusiasm he brought to his research, writing, and teaching.
Stein dated his interest in science to a memory from when he was three years old, as he watched the spinning wheel of his father’s diamond polishing machine, believing he had discovered proof of perpetual motion. He soon came to understand that his so-called theory was a youthful illusion, but one that nonetheless propelled his lifelong view of mathematics as a brilliant balance of imagination and rational investigation. His interest in solving problems never waned. When he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Mathematical Society, with characteristic modesty his response focused not on himself but on the field he so loved, saying: “We can be confident that we are far from the end of this enterprise and that many exciting and wonderful theorems still await our discovery.”
"Town Topics" obituary
The cause of death was complications related to mantle cell lymphoma, according to his family.
Renowned for deep and highly original contributions to his field of mathematics as well as the mentor of generations of younger mathematicians, including two winners of the Fields Medal, the profession’s highest distinction. Mr. Stein was a professor at Princeton University for 55 years, teaching, by popular demand, until the age of 86.
Born on January 13, 1931 in Antwerp to Elkan Stein, a diamond merchant, and Chana Goldman, both Polish citizens, he and his family fled Belgium in 1940, following the German invasion. With diamonds hidden in the soles of his shoes as part of his father’s effort to protect the family’s assets, he entered the United States in April 1941 aboard the SS Nyassa from Lisbon, spending his first three weeks in the country living on Ellis Island. There he first witnessed boys playing “a strange game with sticks,” as he would later tell his children, something he would come to understand to be baseball, a sport he would admire for the rest of his life. It was the beginning of his fierce, if not uncritical, devotion to his adopted homeland, its strange new customs and, above all, the glorious intricacies of its democratic processes, which he monitored with what would become his signature intensity.
After his family settled on New York’s Upper West Side, he enrolled in Stuyvesant High School, where he was captain of the math team, graduating in 1949.
Stein attended college at the University of Chicago and stayed on to earn his PhD in 1955. Following teaching stints there and at MIT, where, among others, he befriended future Nobel Prize winner John Nash, turning, in a rare moment of professional overlap, to his father’s Diamond District connections to help Mr. Nash buy a ring for his future wife, according to Sylvia Nasar’s book, A Beautiful Mind.
Later, Mr. Stein spent an academic year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. While there, he was offered a tenured position at Princeton University, joining the faculty in 1963. For decades, he held an endowed chair as the Albert Baldwin Dod Professor; at the time of his death he was Professor Emeritus. He served twice as chair of the mathematics department.
Stein’s research was primarily in harmonic analysis — roughly speaking, the study of vibrations — a basic tool in science and technology. Mr. Stein discovered new phenomena and unsuspected connections between seemingly unrelated problems. His work led to a deeper understanding of topics as varied as sound recording, the stock market, and gravitational waves. As Charles Fefferman, one of Stein’s star doctoral students and later a colleague at Princeton, has noted of his former thesis advisor, “[his] work often combines two remarkable qualities: an understanding of several branches of math, each of which normally is known only by specialists, and an astonishing ability to find connections between them. Before Stein tells you his solution, the problems involved look utterly hopeless…. Then, with exactly the right point of view and exactly the right few words, … [his] incredible insights … link everything together.”
Stein is the author of several books, now considered classics in their field. In his 70s he devoted his time to creating a series of advanced undergraduate mathematics courses at Princeton and writing, in collaboration with former student Rami Shakarchi, a four-volume textbook to accompany the course. One reviewer of the first volume referred to Stein as “certainly one of the great avatars and developers of Fourier Analysis in modern times.”
He was a prolific author and generous collaborator. His many honors include the Schock Prize from the Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1993, the Wolf Prize in 1999, and the National Medal of Science awarded by President George W. Bush at a White House ceremony in 2002. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he received honorary degrees from Peking University in 1988 (after his effort to help rebuild the local mathematical community following the devastation of the Cultural Revolution), and from his alma mater, the University of Chicago, in 1992.
Stein is survived by Elly, his wife of 59 years; a brother, Daniel; a son, Jeremy, the Moise Y. Safra Professor of Economics at Harvard University and a member of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve from 2012-2014; a daughter, Karen, an architecture critic and former member of the jury of the Pritzker Architecture Prize; a daughter-in-law, Anne; and three grandchildren, Carolyn, Alison, and Jason.
As a collaborator and teacher, he was known for the clarity, elegance, and enthusiasm he brought to his research, writing, and teaching.
Stein dated his interest in science to a memory from when he was three years old, as he watched the spinning wheel of his father’s diamond polishing machine, believing he had discovered proof of perpetual motion. He soon came to understand that his so-called theory was a youthful illusion, but one that nonetheless propelled his lifelong view of mathematics as a brilliant balance of imagination and rational investigation. His interest in solving problems never waned. When he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Mathematical Society, with characteristic modesty his response focused not on himself but on the field he so loved, saying: “We can be confident that we are far from the end of this enterprise and that many exciting and wonderful theorems still await our discovery.”
"Town Topics" obituary
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