Bernard Epstein (10 August 1920, Harrison, New Jersey – 30 March 2005, Montgomery County, Maryland) was an American mathematician and physicist who wrote several widely used textbooks on mathematics.Washington Post obituary: Bernard Epstein, College Mathematics Professor, 83 (This obituary erroneously states that Professor Epstein died at age 83 instead of the correct age 84 and also mistakenly states the number of grandchildren as 17 rather than 16 )
Epstein was the son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and Romania, Yitzkhak Aharon Epstein and Sophie-Sarah née Goldenberg,Personal family records and was the first person in his family to go to college. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics and physics from New York University and then in 1947 a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, with thesis advisor Maurice Heins, from Brown University with thesis Method for the Solution of the Dirichlet Problem for Certain Types of Domains.
In the early 1940s, he worked as a physicist at what is now the National Institute of Standards and Technology. During World War II, he was selected to join the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bombs. After the war, he worked for two years at Harvard University as a research associate, taught mathematics as an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University and NYU and as a professor at Yeshiva University3 April 2005, Washington Post death notice: EPSTEIN, Dr. BERNARD (Age 84) and then spent 21 years on the faculty of the University of New Mexico as a professor of mathematics until his retirement in 1984.
Sabbaticals included Office of Naval Research, London;Article title |ONR London report by Epstein The Technion in Haifa, Israel; University of Maryland; and Air Force Office of Scientific Research. After retirement, he taught at George Mason University.
Epstein was dissertation advisor for the following Ph.D. students: Anne Scheerer, University of Pennsylvania, 1953 William Trench, University of Pennsylvania, 1958 Jack Minker, University of Pennsylvania, 1959 Edwin Sherry, Yeshiva University, 1964 Darrell L. Hicks, University of New Mexico, 1969 Harvey Z. Senter, Yeshiva University
Upon his death at age 84, he was survived by his wife, five children, and 16 grandchildren. His sixth child, a daughter, predeceased him.
Selected publications
Articles
with S. Bergman: with J. Lehner: with A. Scheerer: with David S. Greenstein and Jack Minker: "An extremal problem with infinitely many interpolation conditions". Annals of Finnish Academy of Science (Soumalainen Tiedaekatamia Tomituksia), Series A:1 Mathematics 250/10, 1958. with F. Haber:
with I. J. Schoenberg: with J. Minker:
with M. M. Schiffer:
with H. Senter: with J. R. Blum:
Books Copson, E. T. "Book Review: Bernard Epstein, Partial Differential Equations—An Introduction (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1962), x+ 273 pp., 74s." Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society (Series 2) 13, no. 02 (1962): 193-193.
with Liang-shin Hahn:brief bio of Liang-shin Hahn, Complex Numbers and Geometry, p. 200
References