Richard E. Crandall (December 29, 1947 – December 20, 2012) was an American

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

and

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

who made contributions to

computational number theory In mathematics and computer science, computational number theory, also known as algorithmic number theory, is the study of computational methods for investigating and solving problems in number theory and arithmetic geometry, including algorithm ...

Background

Crandall was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and spent two years at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

before transferring to

Reed College Reed College is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland, Portland, Oregon, E ...

in Portland, Oregon, where he graduated in physics and wrote his undergraduate thesis on randomness. He earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

Career

In 1978, he became a physics professor at Reed College, where he taught courses in experimental physics and computational physics for many years, ultimately becoming Vollum Professor of Science and director of the Center for Advanced Computation. He was also, at various times, Chief Scientist at

NeXT NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later develope ...

, Inc., Chief Cryptographer and Distinguished Scientist at

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

, and head of Apple's Advanced Computation Group. He was a pioneer in experimental mathematics. He developed the irrational base discrete weighted transform, a method of finding very large primes. He wrote several books and many scholarly papers on scientific programming and computation. Crandall was awarded numerous patents for his work in the field of

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logy, -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of Adversary (cryptography), ...

. He also wrote a poker program that could bluff. He owned and operated PSI Press, an online publishing company.

Personal life

Crandall was part

Cherokee The Cherokee (; , or ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern ...

and proud of his Native heritage. He fronted a band called the Chameleons in 1981. He was working on an intellectual biography of Steve Jobs when he collapsed at his home in Portland, Oregon, from acute

leukemia Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia; pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and produce high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or '' ...

. He died 10 days later, on December 20, 2012, at the age of 64.

Books

*''Pascal Applications for the Sciences.'' John Wiley & Sons, New York 1983. * with M. M. Colgrove: ''Scientific Programming with Macintosh Pascal''. John Wiley & Sons, New York 1986. * ''Mathematica for the Sciences'', Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass, 1991. * ''Projects in Scientific Computation.'' Springer 1994. * ''Topics in Advanced Scientific Computation.'' Springer 1996. * with M. Levich: ''A Network Orange.'' Springer 1997. * with C. Pomerance: ''Prime numbers: A Computational Perspective.'' Springer 2001.

References

External links

Professor Richard E. Crandall
many of Crandall's papers can be found here
Nicholas Wheeler
*

Stephen Wolfram Stephen Wolfram ( ; born 29 August 1959) is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer algebra and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Mathematical So ...

Remembering Richard Crandall (1947-2012)
*

David Bailey David Royston Bailey (born 2 January 1938) is an English photographer and director, most widely known for his fashion photography and portraiture, and role in shaping the image of the Swinging Sixties. Bailey has also directed several televisio ...

and

Jonathan Borwein Jonathan Michael Borwein (20 May 1951 – 2 August 2016) was a Scottish mathematician who held an appointment as Laureate Professor of mathematics at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He was a close associate of David H. Bailey, and they ...

Mathematician/physicist/inventor Richard Crandall dies at 64

David BroadhurstA prime puzzle in honor of Richard Crandall
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crandall, Richard 1947 births 2012 deaths Scientists from Ann Arbor, Michigan Scientists from Portland, Oregon 20th-century American inventors 21st-century American inventors American atheists American computer scientists Apple Inc. employees Computational physicists Deaths from leukemia in Oregon Deaths from acute leukemia Reed College faculty Reed College alumni American people of Cherokee descent