Ralph Abraham | |
|---|---|
 Abraham in 2008 | |
| Born | Ralph Herman Abraham (1936-07-04)July 4, 1936 Burlington, Vermont, U.S. |
| Died | September 19, 2024(2024-09-19) (aged 88) Santa Cruz, California, U.S. |
| Alma mater | University of Michigan |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of California, Santa Cruz |
| Thesis | Discontinuities in General Relativity (1960) |
| Doctoral advisor | Nathaniel Coburn |
Ralph Herman Abraham (July 4, 1936 – September 19, 2024) was an American mathematician. In 1968 he became a member of the faculty of theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and later stayed on as aprofessor emeritus of mathematics.
Abraham earned hisBSE (1956),MS (1958), andPhD (1960) from theUniversity of Michigan. His PhD thesis, titledDiscontinuities in General Relativity, was written under the direction of Nathaniel Coburn.[1] Prior to joining UCSC, he held positions at theUniversity of California, Berkeley (research lecturer in mathematics; 1960–1962),Columbia University (postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor of mathematics; 1962–1964) andPrinceton University (assistant professor of mathematics; 1964–1968). He has also held visiting positions inAmsterdam,Paris,Warwick,Barcelona,Basel, andFlorence.
He founded the Visual Math Institute at UCSC[2] in 1975; at that time, it was called the "Visual Mathematics Project".[3] He was editor ofWorld Futures and for theInternational Journal of Bifurcations and Chaos. Abraham was a member of cultural historianWilliam Irwin Thompson'sLindisfarne Association.[4]
Abraham has been involved in the development ofdynamical systems theory since the 1960s and 1970s. He has been a consultant onchaos theory and its applications in numerous fields, such as medical physiology, ecology, mathematical economics, and psychotherapy.[5]
Another interest of Abraham's concerns alternative ways of expressing mathematics, for example visually or aurally. He has staged performances in which mathematics, visual arts andmusic are combined into one presentation. Abraham developed an interest in "Hip" activities in Santa Cruz in the 1960s and had a website gathering information on the topic.[6] He credited his use of thepsychedelic drugDMT with "swerv[ing his] career toward a search for the connections between mathematics and the experience of the Logos".[7]
Abraham died at his home in Santa Cruz County, at the age of 88.[8]
