Milton Abramowitz (19 February 1915 in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

– 5 July 1958) was a Jewish American

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 ...

at the

National Bureau of Standards The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...

who, with

Irene Stegun Irene Ann Stegun (February 9, 1919 – January 27, 2008) was an American mathematician at the National Bureau of Standards (NBS, now the National Institute of Standards and Technology) who edited a classic book of mathematical tables called ''A ...

, edited a classic book of mathematical tables called '' Handbook of Mathematical Functions'', widely known as ''

Abramowitz and Stegun ''Abramowitz and Stegun'' (''AS'') is the informal name of a 1964 mathematical reference work edited by Milton Abramowitz and Irene Stegun of the United States National Bureau of Standards (NBS), now the ''National Institute of Standards and ...

''. Abramowitz died of a heart attack in 1958, at which time the book was not yet completed but was well underway. Stegun took over management of the project and was able to finish the work by 1964, working under the direction of the NBS Chief of

Numerical Analysis Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms that use numerical approximation (as opposed to symbolic manipulations) for the problems of mathematical analysis (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). It is the study of numerical methods ...

Philip J. Davis, who was also a contributor to the book. The major work of producing reliable mathematical tables, as described above, was part of the WPA project of

Franklin Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...

Legacy

The Abramowitz Award is granted by the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of ...

to students "for superior competence and promise in the field of mathematics and its applications." Winners of this award include

Charles Fefferman Charles Louis Fefferman (born April 18, 1949) is an American mathematician at Princeton University, where he is currently the Herbert E. Jones, Jr. '43 University Professor of Mathematics. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1978 for his contri ...

and

Sergey Brin Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (russian: link=no, Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist, and internet entrepreneur, who co-founded Google with Larry Page. Brin was th ...

External links

*
The Math Tables Project of the Work Projects Administration: The Reluctant Start of the Computing Era

References

20th-century American mathematicians 1915 births 1958 deaths Numerical analysts American textbook writers {{US-mathematician-stub