Raymond Redheffer

Raymond Moos Redheffer (April 17, 1921 – May 13, 2005)^[1] was an American mathematician. Some say that he was the creator of one of the first electronic games known, the knowledge game called Nim.^[2]

He earned his PhD in 1948 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of Norman Levinson, and taught as a Peirce Fellow at Harvard from 1948 to 1950 where his teaching skills were gratefully remembered 6 decades later by one of his students.^[3] He taught for 55 years at the University of California, Los Angeles.^[4] writing more than 200 research papers and three textbooks.^[1] His superior teaching talent was formally recognized in 1969 when he was awarded a UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award. Notable and unusual is the physically motivated discussion of the functions of vector calculus in the book with Sokolnikoff. He is known for the Redheffer matrix, and for (with Charles Eames) designing a timeline of mathematics entitled Men of Modern Mathematics that was printed and widely distributed in 1966 by IBM; he also collaborated with Eames on a series of short films about mathematics,^[1] and may have invented the first computer game (a version of Nim with electronic components).

Books

• Sokolnikoff, Ivan S.; Redheffer, Raymond M. (1958), Mathematics of Physics and Modern Engineering, New York: McGraw-Hill . 2nd ed., McGraw-Hill, 1966.
• Levinson, Norman; Redheffer, Raymond M. (1970), Complex Variables, Holden-Day, ISBN 978-0-07-037492-8 .
• Redheffer, Raymond M. (1991), Differential equations : theory and applications, Jones & Bartlett Publishers, ISBN 0-86720-200-9 .
• Redheffer, Raymond M. (1992), Introduction to Differential Equations, Jones & Bartlett Publishers, ISBN 978-0-86720-289-2 .

References