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Ernst Gabor Straus was a mathematician with very wide research interests, an erudite scholar with a seemingly inexhaustible fund of knowledge, a compassionate human being who was a defender of freedom and foe of oppression throughout his life.
Ernst was born in Munich, Germany, on February 25, 1922, the youngest of five children of Elias Straus and Rahel (Goitein) Straus. His father was an attorney and a leading figure in the Zionist movement; his mother was a powerful figure in her own right, a physician who trained at Heidelberg, one of the first female medical students admitted as a regular student at any German university.
Shortly after his father's death, when Ernst was 11, the family moved to Palestine and settled in Jerusalem. There Ernst attended various schools before being admitted, without a high school diploma, to the Hebrew University. His mathematical ability had been recognized at an early age. In Jerusalem he also began a life-long political struggle on behalf of the oppressed of this world, first concentrating on peace and friendship between Arabs and Jews.
In 1941 Ernst, without obtaining an undergraduate degree, was enrolled as a graduate student in mathematics at Columbia University. He obtained the master's degree in 1942. The year 1944 was a pivotal one in Ernst's life. It was then that Albert Einstein selected Ernst to be his assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study. Also, that fall Ernst married Louise Miller, a fellow student at Columbia, and they moved to Princeton.
The association with Einstein during 1944-1948 made a lasting impression on Ernst. Not only did he have the opportunity to work with this great scientist, writing three joint papers with him on relativity and a unified field theory, but he had the good fortune to see at first hand the gentleness and the humanistic side of this great man. In 1948 Ernst completed the formal requirements for the Ph.D. at Columbia by presenting a thesis on Einstein's unified field theory.
Ernst began his career at UCLA as an instructor in 1948, advancing through the ranks in the Mathematics Department to the position of Professor in 1960. This career was suddenly, and sadly, ended with his death of a heart attack on July 12, 1983.
Even before he left Princeton, Ernst had developed his interests in number theory under the influence of the renowned experts Emil Artin, Paul Erdos, Atle Selberg and Carl Ludwig Siegel. This led to his study of what he called the arithmetic of analytic functions, the relation between the analytic properties of entire and meromorphic functions and the arithmetic properties of the values of the functions and their derivatives on certain sets. The development of this theory established him as a first-class number theorist.
But Ernst was not confined to one area in mathematics. He made significant contributions to geometry, convexity, combinatorics, group theory and linear algebra. Together with Erdos and others he was one of the founders of the important and developing area centering on Euclidean Ramsey theorems. With Theodore Motzkin, his colleague and former teacher at the Hebrew University, he produced results in graph theory. There were contributions in geometry with Paul Kelly, UCSB, in convexity with Frederick Valentine and in linear algebra with Moshe Goldberg, both colleagues at UCLA.
Ernst had a host of collaborators, and the output was awesome. His bibliography contains 139 research papers, the English translation of the book by Arnold Sommerfeld, Partial Differential Equations in Physics, two undergraduate analytic geometry texts with Paul Kelly, and various illuminating articles about Einstein. Many of his collaborative efforts had their genesis at his many invited talks at colloquia and conferences in the United States, Canada, Western and Eastern Europe, Israel and India. At the time of his death Ernst was working on seven different articles with various co-workers.
Ernst was on the editorial board of the Pacific Journal of Mathematics during 1951-1964, and he was the Managing Editor of this journal in 1954-59. Later he became an Associate Editor of Linear Algebra and its Applications.
At UCLA his infectious enthusiasm for mathematics attracted numerous students. Twenty-three obtained their doctorate under his supervision; some have gone on to become important mathematicians in their own right.
All his life Ernst was a champion of human rights, and this was reflected in his university service. He served terms as Chairman of the Academic Freedom Committee and the Privilege and Tenure Committee at UCLA, and was a member of the Statewide Academic Freedom Committee, the University Welfare Committee and the UCLA Legislative Assembly. He was president of the UCLA Chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and served on the Ethics Committee of the American Mathematical Society.
Ernst was a dedicated and tireless worker for peace in this world. He was active in the anti-Vietnam war and nuclear freeze movements. Ernst's participation in this work was generous and unselfish. Although he was often one of the prime movers of an event, he did not seek personal recognition or public applause for his efforts.
An encounter with Ernst, even a routine one such as at the departmental lunch table, was usually unforgettable. He moved effortlessly and brilliantly from scientific subjects to history, religion and politics, punctuating his talk with anecdotes and stories from his vast knowledge and experience. Our Mathematics Department, the mathematical community at large, and those who strive for peace everywhere, have lost a great and valiant friend in Ernst Straus. He is survived by his wife Louise, his two sons, Daniel Albert and Paul Elias, and his three sisters, Isa Emrich, Hannah Strauss and Gabriele Rosenthal.
Earl A. Coddington
Donald Kalish
Robert Steinberg
Ernst was born in Munich, Germany, on February 25, 1922, the youngest of five children of Elias Straus and Rahel (Goitein) Straus. His father was an attorney and a leading figure in the Zionist movement; his mother was a powerful figure in her own right, a physician who trained at Heidelberg, one of the first female medical students admitted as a regular student at any German university.
Shortly after his father's death, when Ernst was 11, the family moved to Palestine and settled in Jerusalem. There Ernst attended various schools before being admitted, without a high school diploma, to the Hebrew University. His mathematical ability had been recognized at an early age. In Jerusalem he also began a life-long political struggle on behalf of the oppressed of this world, first concentrating on peace and friendship between Arabs and Jews.
In 1941 Ernst, without obtaining an undergraduate degree, was enrolled as a graduate student in mathematics at Columbia University. He obtained the master's degree in 1942. The year 1944 was a pivotal one in Ernst's life. It was then that Albert Einstein selected Ernst to be his assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study. Also, that fall Ernst married Louise Miller, a fellow student at Columbia, and they moved to Princeton.
The association with Einstein during 1944-1948 made a lasting impression on Ernst. Not only did he have the opportunity to work with this great scientist, writing three joint papers with him on relativity and a unified field theory, but he had the good fortune to see at first hand the gentleness and the humanistic side of this great man. In 1948 Ernst completed the formal requirements for the Ph.D. at Columbia by presenting a thesis on Einstein's unified field theory.
Ernst began his career at UCLA as an instructor in 1948, advancing through the ranks in the Mathematics Department to the position of Professor in 1960. This career was suddenly, and sadly, ended with his death of a heart attack on July 12, 1983.
Even before he left Princeton, Ernst had developed his interests in number theory under the influence of the renowned experts Emil Artin, Paul Erdos, Atle Selberg and Carl Ludwig Siegel. This led to his study of what he called the arithmetic of analytic functions, the relation between the analytic properties of entire and meromorphic functions and the arithmetic properties of the values of the functions and their derivatives on certain sets. The development of this theory established him as a first-class number theorist.
But Ernst was not confined to one area in mathematics. He made significant contributions to geometry, convexity, combinatorics, group theory and linear algebra. Together with Erdos and others he was one of the founders of the important and developing area centering on Euclidean Ramsey theorems. With Theodore Motzkin, his colleague and former teacher at the Hebrew University, he produced results in graph theory. There were contributions in geometry with Paul Kelly, UCSB, in convexity with Frederick Valentine and in linear algebra with Moshe Goldberg, both colleagues at UCLA.
Ernst had a host of collaborators, and the output was awesome. His bibliography contains 139 research papers, the English translation of the book by Arnold Sommerfeld, Partial Differential Equations in Physics, two undergraduate analytic geometry texts with Paul Kelly, and various illuminating articles about Einstein. Many of his collaborative efforts had their genesis at his many invited talks at colloquia and conferences in the United States, Canada, Western and Eastern Europe, Israel and India. At the time of his death Ernst was working on seven different articles with various co-workers.
Ernst was on the editorial board of the Pacific Journal of Mathematics during 1951-1964, and he was the Managing Editor of this journal in 1954-59. Later he became an Associate Editor of Linear Algebra and its Applications.
At UCLA his infectious enthusiasm for mathematics attracted numerous students. Twenty-three obtained their doctorate under his supervision; some have gone on to become important mathematicians in their own right.
All his life Ernst was a champion of human rights, and this was reflected in his university service. He served terms as Chairman of the Academic Freedom Committee and the Privilege and Tenure Committee at UCLA, and was a member of the Statewide Academic Freedom Committee, the University Welfare Committee and the UCLA Legislative Assembly. He was president of the UCLA Chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and served on the Ethics Committee of the American Mathematical Society.
Ernst was a dedicated and tireless worker for peace in this world. He was active in the anti-Vietnam war and nuclear freeze movements. Ernst's participation in this work was generous and unselfish. Although he was often one of the prime movers of an event, he did not seek personal recognition or public applause for his efforts.
An encounter with Ernst, even a routine one such as at the departmental lunch table, was usually unforgettable. He moved effortlessly and brilliantly from scientific subjects to history, religion and politics, punctuating his talk with anecdotes and stories from his vast knowledge and experience. Our Mathematics Department, the mathematical community at large, and those who strive for peace everywhere, have lost a great and valiant friend in Ernst Straus. He is survived by his wife Louise, his two sons, Daniel Albert and Paul Elias, and his three sisters, Isa Emrich, Hannah Strauss and Gabriele Rosenthal.
Earl A. Coddington
Donald Kalish
Robert Steinberg
This University of California obituary is available at THIS LINK