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Ralph Abraham (mathematician)

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American mathematician (1936–2024) For the politician, see Ralph Abraham (politician).

Ralph Abraham
Abraham in 2008
BornRalph Herman Abraham
(1936-07-04)July 4, 1936
Burlington, Vermont, U.S.
DiedSeptember 19, 2024(2024-09-19) (aged 88)
Santa Cruz, California, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Michigan
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Santa Cruz
ThesisDiscontinuities in General Relativity (1960)
Doctoral advisorNathaniel Coburn

Ralph Herman Abraham (July 4, 1936 – September 19, 2024) was an American mathematician. In 1968 he became a member of the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and later stayed on as a professor emeritus of mathematics.

Life and work

Abraham earned his BSE (1956), MS (1958), and PhD (1960) from the University of Michigan. His PhD thesis, titled Discontinuities in General Relativity, was written under the direction of Nathaniel Coburn. Prior to joining UCSC, he held positions at the University of California, Berkeley (research lecturer in mathematics; 1960–1962), Columbia University (postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor of mathematics; 1962–1964) and Princeton University (assistant professor of mathematics; 1964–1968). He has also held visiting positions in Amsterdam, Paris, Warwick, Barcelona, Basel, and Florence.

He founded the Visual Math Institute at UCSC in 1975; at that time, it was called the "Visual Mathematics Project". He was editor of World Futures and for the International Journal of Bifurcations and Chaos. Abraham was a member of cultural historian William Irwin Thompson's Lindisfarne Association.

Abraham has been involved in the development of dynamical systems theory since the 1960s and 1970s. He has been a consultant on chaos theory and its applications in numerous fields, such as medical physiology, ecology, mathematical economics, and psychotherapy.

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 and music 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. He credited his use of the psychedelic drug DMT with "swerv career toward a search for the connections between mathematics and the experience of the Logos".

Abraham died at his home in Santa Cruz County, at the age of 88.

Works

Publications
Film

References

  1. Ralph Abraham at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. Baine, Wallace (July 15, 2016). "Santa Cruz County Stories: UCSC's Ralph Abraham keeps alive the memories of Santa Cruz's hip golden era in 1975". Santa Cruz Sentinel. Retrieved June 19, 2024.
  3. Complexity, Democracy and Sustainability The 50th Anniversary Meeting of The International Society for the Systems Sciences. Sonoma State University, 2006. Retrieved 7 June 2008.
  4. "Santa Cruz 1960s". www.ralph-abraham.org.
  5. Sheldrake, Rupert; McKenna, Terence; Abraham, Ralph (August 20, 2013). The Evolutionary Mind: Conversations on Science, Imagination & Spirit. Monkfish Book Publishing. pp. 63–. ISBN 9781939681102. Retrieved April 12, 2014.
  6. Baine, Wallace (October 6, 2024). "From math to mushrooms, intellectual explorer Ralph Abraham was always looking for the Big Picture". Lookout Santa Cruz. Retrieved October 6, 2024.
  7. Sternberg, Shlomo (1980). "Review: Foundations of mechanics, 2nd edition, revised and enlarged, by Ralph Abraham and Jerrold E. Marsden" (PDF). Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. New Series. 2 (2): 378–387. doi:10.1090/S0273-0979-1980-14771-0.
  8. companion CD-ROM by Ronald Joe Record and Ralph Abraham
  9. "Full cast and crew", DMT: The Spirit Molecule, IMDb, 2010

External links

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