Gene H. Golub

Gene Howard Golub (February 29, 1932 – November 16, 2007), Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science (and, by courtesy, of Electrical Engineering) at Stanford University, was one of the preeminent numerical analysts of his generation.

Born in Chicago, he was educated at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, receiving his B.S. (1953), M.A. (1954) and Ph.D. (1959) all in the field of Mathematics [ Chen Greif, Gene H. Golub Biography, Online at Oxford University Press [http://www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-920681-3.pdf ] , accessed 24/11/2007] . His M.A. degree was more specifically in Mathematical Statistics. His PhD dissertation was entitled "The Use of Chebyshev Matrix Polynomials in the Iterative Solution of Linear Equations Compared to the Method of Successive Overrelaxation" and his thesis adviser was Abraham Taub. He had been at Stanford since 1962 and became a professor there in 1970. He had advised almost thirty doctoral students, many of whom have themselves achieved distinction. Gene Golub was an important figure in numerical analysis and pivotal to creating the NA-Net and the NA-Digest, as well as the International Conference on Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

One of his best-known books is "Matrix Computations", [Citation
last1 = Golub | first1 = Gene H.
last2 = van Loan | first2 = Charles F.
title = Matrix Computations, 3rd edition
publisher = Johns Hopkins University Press;
year = 1996
isbn = 978-0-8018-5414-9] co-authored with Charles F. Van Loan. He was a major contributor to algorithms for matrix decompositions. In particular he published an algorithm together with William Kahan in 1970 that made the computation of the singular value decomposition (SVD) feasible and that is still used today. A survey of his work was published in 2007 by OUP as "Milestones in Matrix Computation". [Citation
last1 =Chan | first1 = Raymond
last2 = Greif | first2 = Chen
last3 = O'Leary | first2 = Dianne
title = Milestones in Matrix Computation The selected works of Gene H. Golub with commentaries
publisher = Oxford University Press
year = 2007
isbn = 139780199206810]

Golub was awarded the B. Bolzano Gold Medal for Merits in the Field of Mathematical Sciences and chosen as a Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1993). He is listed as an ISI highly cited researcher. [Citation
last = Thomson ISI
title = Golub, Gene H., ISI Highly Cited Researchers
url= http://hcr3.isiknowledge.com/author.cgi?id=2509&cb=23
accessdate = 2007-11-17] He held several honorary degrees and was scheduled to receive an honorary degree from ETH Zürich on November 17, 2007.

Gene Golub succumbed to acute myeloid leukemia on the morning of 16 November 2007 at the Stanford Hospital. [Citation
last = Moler
first = Cleve
author-link = Cleve Moler
date = 2007-11-16
year = 2007
title = Gene Golub, 1932 - 2007, NA Digest
url=http://www.netlib.org/na-digest-html/07/v07n47.html#1
accessdate = 2007-11-17]

References

External links

* [http://sccm.stanford.edu/faculty/nf-golub.html Home page at Stanford University] (Archived version May 2007) [http://web.archive.org/web/20070513111448/http://sccm.stanford.edu/faculty/nf-golub.html]
*MathGenealogy |id=39145
* [http://genehgolub.blogspot.com/ Gene H Golub Memorial page]
* [http://history.siam.org/oralhistories/golub.htm Gene Golub, Oral history interview by Thomas Haigh, 22 and 23, October, 2005, Stanford University. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Philadelphia, PA] six hour interview covers full career - transcript online.