Robert Joshua Rubin (; August 17, 1926 – January 18, 2008) was an 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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

whose work involved modelling complex

physical system A physical system is a collection of physical objects under study. The collection differs from a set: all the objects must coexist and have some physical relationship. In other words, it is a portion of the physical universe chosen for analys ...

s. He is best known as the husband of astronomer

Vera Rubin Vera Florence Cooper Rubin (; July 23, 1928 – December 25, 2016) was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted and observed angular motion of galaxies by studyi ...

Early life and education

Robert Joshua Rubin (b. 1926) was born in New York state to Benjamin Rubin, an artist, and his wife Bess, a stenographer. While in elementary school, he became a serious tennis player, an activity in which he would remain active through his college years. Initially enrolled at Johns Hopkins University, his studies were interrupted by the advent of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. Rubin enlisted in the Navy. After the war ended, the Navy sent him to study chemical engineering at Cornell University on the V-12 program, where he played on the tennis team and completed his B.S. in 1947. He became engaged to Vera Florence Cooper in late fall of 1947 before returning to Cornell for graduate work in the spring of 1948. Robert and Vera were married in July 1948 following her graduation from Vassar College. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Cornell in 1951; his doctoral advisor was

Peter Debye Peter Joseph William Debye ( ; born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije, ; March 24, 1884 – November 2, 1966) was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Biography Early life Born in Maastricht, Neth ...

Career

Following completion of his Ph.D., Rubin worked at the Johns Hopkins Advanced Physics Laboratory in Washington until 1955, when he became a visiting assistant professor of physical chemistry at the University of Illinois. Returning to Washington in 1957, and he joined 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 sc ...

(later the National Institute of Standards and Technology) as a physicist. He also was on their tennis team. During the 1960s, his family spent summers in the West, where Rubin worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and at the National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colo.

Personal life

From 1948 until his death in 2008, he was married to

. After many years in which Rubin's wife, astronomer Vera Rubin, arranged her education and employment to follow his schedule, Rubin eventually returned the favor, and "arranged his life so his wife, Vera C. ''Rubin'', an astronomer who won the National Medal of Science in 1993, could travel for research and to use telescopes in the United States and Chile." Their four children include Judith Young (astronomer) and

Karl Rubin Karl Cooper Rubin (born January 27, 1956) is an American mathematician at University of California, Irvine as Thorp Professor of Mathematics. Between 1997 and 2006, he was a professor at Stanford, and before that worked at Ohio State University b ...

(mathematician).

Associations

Rubin was a

Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (FAAAS) is an honor accorded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to distinguished persons who are members of the Association. Fellows are elected ...

and also a

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics. The following lists are divided chronologically by the year of designation. * List of fellows of the ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rubin, Robert Joshua 1926 births 2008 deaths Cornell University alumni Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the American Physical Society Scientists from New York City National Institute of Standards and Technology people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Mathematicians from New York (state) Rubin family