Albert "Tommy" Wilansky (13 September 1921,St. John's, Newfoundland – 3 July 2017,Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) was a Canadian-American mathematician, known for introducingSmith numbers.[1][2]
Wilansky was educated as an undergraduate atDalhousie University, where he received an M.A. in mathematics in 1944. From 1944 to 1947 he was a graduate student at Brown University.[3] In 1947 he received his Ph.D. with advisorClarence Raymond Adams and dissertationAn application of Banach linear functionals to the theory of summability.[4]
From 1948 until his official retirement in 1992, Wilansky was a faculty member of the mathematics department ofLehigh University.[3]
He was the university’s Distinguished Professor of Mathematics for the final 14 years of his tenure. During his 44 years at Lehigh he was a Fulbright visiting professor several times, at universities in Reading (1972–1973), London (1973), Tel Aviv (1981), and Berne (1981). Outside of academia he was a consultant for theFrankford Arsenal for the year 1957–1958.[3]
Wilansky did research in analysis, specializing in summability theory, linear topological spaces, Banach algebras, and functional analysis.[3] He was the author of several books and the author or co-author of more than 80 articles. He lectured at over 50 different universities.[2] In 1969 he received theMathematical Association of America'sLester R. Ford Award for his 1968 articleSpectral Decomposition of Matrices for High School Students.[5] (The 1969 award was also given individually to 5 other mathematicians.)
Wilansky was married to his first wife from 1947 until her death in 1969. They had two daughters. He had three step-daughters from his second marriage.
He was a professional musician for a brief time as a young man and continued playing piano and clarinet and writing songs, often with his wives and daughters.[2]
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