Category Archives: Obituaries

Igor Krichever 1950-2022

I just heard the sad news that Igor Krichever passed away this morning at the age of 72. Igor was a great scholar, a wise man, and a wonderful human being. He will be sorely missed by his colleagues at … Continue reading

Posted in Obituaries | 2 Comments

Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff 1949-2021/22

A few days ago I heard news from Paris of the death of Grichka Bogdanoff on Dec. 28, and this morning heard of the death yesterday of his twin brother Igor. There are many news stories online (e.g. here), and … Continue reading

Posted in Obituaries | 21 Comments

Steven Weinberg 1933-2021

I heard this morning the news that Steven Weinberg passed away yesterday at the age of 88.  He was arguably the dominant figure in theoretical particle physics during its period of great success from the late sixties to the early … Continue reading

Posted in Obituaries | 18 Comments

Isadore Singer 1924-2021

I was sorry to hear this morning of the death yesterday at the age of 96 of Is Singer, a mathematician who led much of the interaction between mathematics and physics during the 1970s and 1980s. In the early stages … Continue reading

Posted in Obituaries | 9 Comments

Martin Veltman 1931-2021

I heard today of the recent death of Martin Veltman, a theorist largely responsible (with his student Gerard ‘t Hooft) for showing the renormalizability of non-abelian gauge theories, a breakthrough crucial to the Standard Model that won both of the … Continue reading

Posted in Obituaries | 15 Comments

Lucien Szpiro 1941-2020

I’m very sorry to hear (via Michael Harris) of the death this morning in Paris of Lucien Szpiro, of heart failure. Szpiro was a faculty member here at Columbia for a few years, livening up the place at a time … Continue reading

Posted in Obituaries | 5 Comments

Philip Anderson 1923-2020

I heard this morning about the death yesterday of Philip Anderson, at the age of 96. It’s not hard to make the case that Anderson was the most important condensed matter theorist of the twentieth century, with a huge influence … Continue reading

Posted in Obituaries | 12 Comments

Robert Hermann 1931-2020

I was sorry to hear today of the recent death of Robert Hermann, at the age of 88. While I unfortunately never got to meet him, his writing had a lot of influence on me, as it likely did for … Continue reading

Posted in Obituaries | 11 Comments

John Tate 1925-2019

John Tate, who was responsible for some of the most important developments in number theory and arithmetic geometry during the second half of the twentieth century, has passed away at the age of 94. Tate was a faculty member in … Continue reading

Posted in Obituaries | 1 Comment

Some Math News

My Columbia colleague Patrick Gallagher passed away a few months ago at the age of 84. He had only recently retired, and for many years was the longest serving member of the department and an important part of its institutional … Continue reading

Posted in Langlands, Obituaries | 7 Comments