Tobias Dantzig

Tobias Dantzig (/ˈdæntsɪɡ/; February 19, 1884 – August 9, 1956) was a Russian-American mathematician, the father of George Dantzig, and the author of Number: The Language of Science (A critical survey written for the cultured non-mathematician) (1930) and Aspects of Science (New York, Macmillan, 1937).

Biography

Born in Shavli^[1][2] (then Imperial Russia, now Lithuania) into the family of Shmuel Dantzig (?-1940) and Guta Dimant (1863–1917), he grew up in Łódź and studied mathematics with Henri Poincaré in Paris.^[3] His brother Jacob (1891-1942) was murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust; he also had a brother Naftali (who lived in Moscow) and sister Emma.

Tobias married a fellow Sorbonne University student, Anja Ourisson, and the couple emigrated to the United States in 1910. He worked for a time as a lumberjack, road worker, and house painter in Oregon, until returning to academia at the encouragement of Reed College mathematician Frank Griffin.^[3] Dantzig received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Indiana University Bloomington in 1917, while working as a professor there.^[3][4] He later taught at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and the University of Maryland, College Park.

Dantzig died in Los Angeles in 1956. He was the father of George Dantzig, a key figure in the development of linear programming.

Partial list of publications

• Number: The Language of Science (1930);^[5] reprint of 4th edition. Penguin. 2007. ISBN 9780452288119.
• Aspects of Science (1937)
• The Story of Geometry (1940)
• Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954)
• The Bequest of the Greeks (1955); Dantzig, Tobias (2006). Dover reprint. Courier Corporation. ISBN 9780486453477.