William Karush (1 March 1917 – 22 February 1997) was an American

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...

of mathematics at California State University at Northridge and was a

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

best known for his contribution to

Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions In mathematical optimization, the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions, also known as the Kuhn–Tucker conditions, are first derivative tests (sometimes called first-order necessary conditions) for a solution in nonlinear programming to be o ...

. In his master's thesis he was the first to publish these necessary conditions for the inequality-constrained problem,. Available from http://wwwlib.umi.com/dxweb/details?doc_no=7371591 (for a fee) although he became renowned after a seminal conference paper by Harold W. Kuhn and Albert W. Tucker. He also worked as a physicist for the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...

, although he signed the

Szilárd petition The Szilárd petition, drafted and circulated in July 1945 by scientist Leo Szilard, was signed by 70 scientists working on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, Illinois. It asked President H ...

and became a

peace activist A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals, such as the ending of a particular war (or wars) or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world pe ...

afterwards.

Selected works

* Webster's New World Dictionary of Mathematics,

MacMillan Reference Books Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the 'Big Five' English language publi ...

, Revised edition (April 1989), * On the Maximum Transform and Semigroups of Transformations (1962),

Richard Bellman Richard Ernest Bellman (August 26, 1920 – March 19, 1984) was an American applied mathematician, who introduced dynamic programming in 1953, and made important contributions in other fields of mathematics, such as biomathematics. He founde ...

, William Karush, *

The crescent dictionary of mathematics ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...

, general editor (1962) William Karush, Oscar Tarcov * Isoperimetric problems & index theorems. (1942), William Karush, Thesis ( Ph.D.)

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, Department of Mathematics. * Minima of functions of several variables with inequalities as side conditions, William Karush. (1939), Thesis (

M.S. A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

) – University of Chicago, 1939.

References

External links

* 1917 births 1997 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians California State University, Northridge faculty University of Chicago alumni Manhattan Project people 20th-century American physicists Mathematical physicists Activists from Chicago American anti-war activists {{US-mathematician-stub

Selected works

See also

References

External links