Branko Grünbaum | |
|---|---|
 Branko Grünbaum in 1975 | |
| Born | 2 October 1929 |
| Died | 14 September 2018(2018-09-14) (aged 88) Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
| Nationality | Croatian American |
| Alma mater | Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| Awards | Lester R. Ford Award (1976) Carl B. Allendoerfer Award (1978) Leroy P. Steele Prize (2005) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of Washington |
| Thesis | On Some Properties of Minkowski Spaces (1957) |
| Doctoral advisor | Aryeh Dvoretzky |
| Doctoral students | |
Branko Grünbaum (Hebrew:ברנקו גרונבאום; 2 October 1929 – 14 September 2018)[1] was a Croatian-bornmathematician ofJewish descent[2] and a professoremeritus at theUniversity of Washington inSeattle. He received his Ph.D. in 1957 fromHebrew University of Jerusalem.[3]
Grünbaum was born inOsijek, then part of theKingdom of Yugoslavia, on 2 October 1929. His father wasJewish and his mother wasCatholic, so duringWorld War II the family survivedthe Holocaust by living at his Catholic grandmother's home. After the war, as a high school student, he met Zdenka Bienenstock, a Jew who had lived through the war hidden in a convent while the rest of her family were killed. Grünbaum became a student at theUniversity of Zagreb, but grew disenchanted with thecommunist ideology of theSocialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, applied for emigration to Israel, and traveled with his family and Zdenka toHaifa in 1949.[4]
In Israel, Grünbaum found a job inTel Aviv, but in 1950 returned to the study of mathematics,[4] at theHebrew University of Jerusalem.[1] He earned a master's degree in 1954 and in the same year married Zdenka, who continued as a master's student in chemistry. He served a tour of duty as anoperations researcher in the Israeli Air Force beginning in 1955, and he and Zdenka had the first of their two sons in 1956.[4] He completed his Ph.D. in 1957;[4][3] his dissertation concernedconvex geometry and was supervised byAryeh Dvoretzky.[3]
After finishing his military service in 1958, Grünbaum and his family came to the US so that Grünbaum could become a postdoctoral researcher at theInstitute for Advanced Study. He then became a visiting researcher at theUniversity of Washington in 1960. He agreed to return to Israel as a lecturer at the Hebrew University, but his plans were disrupted by the Israeli authorities determining that he was not a Jew (because his mother was not Jewish) and annulling his marriage; he and Zdenka remarried in Seattle before their return.[4]
Grünbaum remained affiliated with the Hebrew University until 1966, taking long research visits to the University of Washington and in 1965–1966 toMichigan State University. However, during the Michigan visit, learning of another case similar to their marriage annulment, he and Zdenka decided to stay in the US instead of returning to Israel, where Zdenka was still a doctoral student in chemistry. Grünbaum was given a full professorship at the University of Washington in 1966, and he remained there until retiring in 2001.[4]
Grünbaum authored over 200 papers, mostly indiscrete geometry, an area in which he is known for variousclassification theorems. He wrote on the theory ofabstract polyhedra.
His paper online arrangements may have inspired a paper byN. G. de Bruijn onquasiperiodic tilings (the most famous example of which is thePenrose tiling of the plane). This paper is also cited by the authors of a monograph on hyperplane arrangements as having inspired their research.
Grünbaum also devised amulti-set generalisation ofVenn diagrams. He was an editor and a frequent contributor toGeombinatorics.
Grünbaum's classic monographConvex Polytopes, first published in 1967, became the main textbook on the subject. His monographTilings and patterns, coauthored withG. C. Shephard, helped to rejuvenate interest in this classic field, and has proved popular with nonmathematical audiences, as well as with mathematicians.
In 1976 Grünbaum won aLester R. Ford Award for his expository articleVenn diagrams and independent families of sets.[5] In 2004,Gil Kalai andVictor Klee edited a special issue ofDiscrete and Computational Geometry in his honor, the "Grünbaum Festschrift". In 2005, Grünbaum was awarded theLeroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition from theAmerican Mathematical Society. He was aGuggenheim Fellow, aFellow of the AAAS and in 2012 he became a fellow of theAmerican Mathematical Society.[6][7]Grünbaum supervised 19 Ph.D.s and currently has at least 200mathematical descendants.[3]
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