Peter David Lax was born on Lax Peter David; 1 May 1926 and is a Hungarian-born American mathematician and Abel Prize laureate working in the areas of pure and applied mathematics.
14 Facts About Peter Lax
2.
Interest in the "Peter Lax conjecture" grew as mathematicians working in several different areas recognized the importance of its implications in their field, until it was finally proven to be true in 2003.
3.
Peter Lax was born in Budapest, Hungary to a Jewish family.
4.
Peter Lax's parents Klara Kornfield and Henry Lax were both physicians and his uncle Albert Kornfeld was a mathematician, as well as a friend of Leo Szilard.
5.
Peter Lax attended a complex analysis class in the role of a student, but ended up taking over as instructor.
6.
Peter Lax met his future wife, Anneli Cahn in this class.
7.
Peter Lax was then sent to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and soon afterwards to the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
8.
Peter Lax stayed at NYU for his graduate studies, marrying Anneli in 1948 and earning a PhD in 1949 under the supervision of Kurt O Friedrichs.
9.
Peter Lax holds a faculty position in the Department of Mathematics, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University.
10.
Peter Lax is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the National Academy of Sciences, USA, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.
11.
Peter Lax won a Lester R Ford Award in 1966 and again in 1973.
12.
Peter Lax was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1986, the Wolf Prize in 1987, the Abel Prize in 2005 and the Lomonosov Gold Medal in 2013.
13.
Peter Lax received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1990.
14.
In 1970, as part of an anti-war protest, the Transcendental Students took hostage a CDC 6600 super computer at NYU's Courant Institute which Peter Lax had been instrumental in acquiring; the students demanded $100,000 in ransom to provide bail for a member of the Black Panthers.