Solomon Marcus | |
|---|---|
 Solomon Marcus in 2007. | |
| Born | (1925-03-01)1 March 1925 |
| Died | 17 March 2016(2016-03-17) (aged 91) |
| Alma mater | University of Bucharest |
| Awards | National Order of Faithful Service, Grand Officer rank Order of the Star of Romania, Commander rank |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of Bucharest |
| Doctoral advisor | Miron Nicolescu |
| Doctoral students | Cristian S. Calude Gheorghe Păun Ileana Streinu |
Solomon Marcus (Romanian pronunciation:[ˈsolomonˈmarkus]; 1 March 1925 – 17 March 2016) was aRomanian mathematician, member of the Mathematical Section of theRomanian Academy (full member from 2001) and emeritus professor of theUniversity of Bucharest's Faculty of Mathematics.
His main research was in the fields ofmathematical analysis, mathematical andcomputational linguistics andcomputer science. He also published numerous papers on various cultural topics:poetics,linguistics,semiotics, philosophy, andhistory of science and education.
He was born inBacău, Romania, to Sima and Alter Marcus, aJewish family of tailors.[1] From an early age he had to live through dictatorships, war, infringements on free speech and free thinking as well asanti-Semitism.[2] At the age of 16 or 17 he started tutoring younger pupils in order to help his family financially.[2]
He graduated fromFerdinand I High School in 1944, and completed his studies at theUniversity of Bucharest's Faculty of Science, Department of Mathematics, in 1949. He continued tutoring throughout college and later recounted in an interview that he had to endure hunger during those years and that till the age of 20 he only wore hand-me-downs from his older brothers.[2]
Marcus obtained his PhD in Mathematics in 1956, with a thesis on theMonotonic functions of twovariables, written under the direction ofMiron Nicolescu.[3] He was appointed Lecturer in 1955, Associate Professor in 1964, and became a Professor in 1966 (Emeritus in 1991).
Marcus has contributed to the following areas:
Marcus published about 50 books, which have been translated into English,French,German,Italian,Spanish,Russian,Greek,Hungarian,Czech,Serbo-Croatian, and about 400 research articles in specialized journals in almost all European countries, in theUnited States,Canada,South America,Japan,India, andNew Zealand among others; he is cited by more than a thousand authors, including mathematicians, computer scientists, linguists, literary researchers, semioticians, anthropologists and philosophers.
He is recognised[4][5][6] as one of the initiators of mathematical linguistics and of mathematical poetics, and has been a member of the editorial board of tens of international scientific journals coveringall his domains of interest.
Marcus is featured in the 1999 bookPeople and Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science.[7] and the 2015The Human Face of Computing .[8]A collection of his papers in English followed by some interviews and a brief autobiography was published in 2007 asWords and Languages Everywhere.[9]
The bookMeetings with Solomon Marcus (Spandugino Publishing House, Bucharest, Romania, 2010, 1500 pages), edited by Lavinia Spandonide andGheorghe Păun for Marcus' 85th birthday, includes recollections by several hundred people from a large variety of scientific and cultural fields, and from 25 countries. It also contains a longer autobiography.
Marcus died of cardiac infections[10][11] at theFundeni Clinical Institute [ro] in Bucharest after a short stay atElias Hospital [ro] in Bucharest.
Romanian Royal Family: Knight of theRoyal Decoration of Nihil Sine Deo.[13]