Martin Harvey Krieger (March 10, 1944 – July 10, 2024) was an American physicist, author, and emeritus professor with decades of teaching in public policy and urban planning. He was known for his research on mathematical models of urban phenomena, ecological issues of design and planning, notions of uncertainty in policy and planning, environmental policy, defense policy, and aural and visual documentation of urban phenomena in southern California, especially Los Angeles.[1][2]
Martin was born on March 10, 1944, in Brooklyn, New York, and was brought up as an Orthodox Jew inBensonhurst, Brooklyn.[3] At Columbia University he graduated in physics with a B.A.magna cum laude in 1965, an M.A. in 1965, and a Ph.D. in 1969. His Ph.D. thesis is entitledNeutron Emission from Muon Capture.[4]
From 1968 to 1973 Krieger worked at theUniversity of California, Berkeley — from 1968 to 1969 as a physicist at theLawrence Radiation Laboratory, from 1969 to 1972 as an assistant research planner at the Institute of Urban and Regional Development (IURD, established in 1962), and from 1970 to 1973 at theUC Berkeley College of Environmental Design as a lecturer in environmental policy, in city and regional planning, and in architecture. From 1973 to 1974 he was a fellow at theCenter for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences adjacent toStanford University. From 1974 to 1980 (with leave of absence from 1978 to 1980) he was an assistant professor at theUniversity of Minnesota'sHubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. From 1978 to 1979 he was a fellow at theNational Humanities Center in North Carolina. From 1980 to 1984 he taught and did research at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. At theUniversity of Southern California (USC) he was an associate professor of planning from 1984 to 1991 and a full professor from 1991 until his retirement as professor emeritus. For the academic year 1990–1991 he was on leave of absence from USC and held a visiting associate professorship in business administration at theUniversity of Michigan, as the Zell-Lurie Fellow in the Teaching of Entrepreneurship. He received many fellowships and grants for his research and contributed to numerous photographic exhibits. He was the author of ten books.[4]
From about 1998 to 2019, Krieger systematically photographed, among other topics: storefront houses of worship in Los Angeles (750+); all theLos Angeles Department of Water and Power electrical substations (125); the Orthodox Jewish enclavePico-Robertson; industrial streetscapes in Los Angeles and then industrial worksites in Los Angeles (225), showing people at work; sellers atswap meets in Los Angeles, as entrepreneurs; "transit oriented development" in neighborhoods surroundingNew York City Subway Stations (75), and a similar but more limited project internationally, at first inBarcelona andSingapore (project ceased due to2020 quarantines).
In another project, Krieger and collaborators rephotographed Paris scenes that were originally photographed byCharles Marville (1813–1879), before and after photographs as Paris was reconstructed underBaron Haussmann andNapoleon III.
In the latter part of this period, Krieger recorded in calibrated and accurate surround sound: people talking on the bus in Los Angeles; the ambience in various sites in Los Angeles; worship services at storefront houses of worship, among other projects.
Krieger received the USC-Mellon Award for Excellence in Mentoring three times: in 2005, in 2006, and in 2007, for mentoring, respectively, undergraduates, faculty, and graduate students.[4] In 2006 he was elected a fellow of theAmerican Physical Society for "his series of books on the historical development of models and the mathematics employed in twentieth-century physics, especially theIsing model and its relatives and the proofs of thestability of matter."[6] Martin died on July 10, 2024, at the age of 80.[7]
—— (1991). "Theorems as meaningful cultural artifacts: Making the world additive".Synthese.88 (2):135–154.doi:10.1007/BF00567742.S2CID46955725.
—— (1995). "What Does Jerusalem Have to do with Athens?: Roles for the Humanities in Planning".Journal of Planning Education and Research.14 (3):217–221.doi:10.1177/0739456X9501400312.S2CID143618865.
Ra, Moo-Ryong; Paek, Jeongyeup; Sharma, Abhishek B.; Govindan, Ramesh; ——; Neely, Michael J. (2010). "Energy-delay tradeoffs in smartphone applications".Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services - MobiSys '10. p. 255.doi:10.1145/1814433.1814459.ISBN9781605589855.S2CID6671040. (over 350 citations)
——; Ra, Moo-Ryong; Paek, Jeongyeup; Govindan, Ramesh; Evans-Cowley, Jennifer (2010). "Urban Tomography".Journal of Urban Technology.17 (2):21–36.doi:10.1080/10630732.2010.515087.S2CID20936562.
—— (2010). "Commentary: The City-Inscribed and City-Natural-At Your Feet".Journal of Planning Education and Research.29 (4):491–493.doi:10.1177/0739456X10363388.S2CID144107841.
Banerjee, T.; Loukaitou-Sideris, eds. (2011). "Chapter 18.Media Tools for Urban Design by M. Krieger".Companion to Urban Design. London: Routledge. pp. 338–348.ISBN9781136920080.
—— (2011). "Commentary: Lessons from Charles Marville—Preserving Detail in Media Documentation of Cities, Studying that Detail in Urban Research".Journal of Planning Education and Research.31 (2):217–219.doi:10.1177/0739456X10397279.S2CID147118610.
—— (2020). "Legerdemain in Mathematical Physics: Structure, Tricks, and Lacunae in Derivations of the Partition Function of the Two-Dimensional Ising Model and in Proofs of The Stability of Matter".arXiv:2009.12016 [cond-mat.stat-mech].
—— (2022). "Packaging Spectra (as in Partition Functions and L/-functions) to Reveal Symmetries (Reciprocity) in Nature and in Numbers".arXiv:2205.04931 [cond-mat.stat-mech].
The Constitutions of Matter: Mathematically Modeling the Most Everyday of Physical Phenomena. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1996.; xxii + 343 pp.MR1425391
Entrepreneurial Vocations: Learning from the Callings of Augustine, Moses, Mothers, Antigone, Oedipus and Prospero. Atlanta: Scholars Press. 1996. pp. xvii + 210 pp.
What's Wrong With Plastic Trees?: Artifice and Authenticity in Design. Westport: Praeger. 2000.ISBN978-0275967765.; xxi + 157 pp.
Krieger, Martin H. (2003).Doing Mathematics: Convention, Subject, Calculation, Analogy. Singapore: World Scientific.ISBN981-238-200-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link); xviii + 454 pp.[9]MR1961400 According to John H. Mason of theOpen University,[10] in "Review ofDoing Mathematics," Math-Sci Net, MR1961400 (2004a:00011) "Not since conversations withGian-Carlo Rota have I encountered such a sophisticated and comprehensive view of modern mathematics."
^"John Mason".Promoting Mathematical Think ... the Home of John Mason & Anne Watson (pmtheta.com).
^Steiner, Frederick (2011). "A Review ofUrban Tomographies by Martin H. Krieger".Journal of the American Planning Association.77 (3):293–294.doi:10.1080/01944363.2011.588559.S2CID153998850.