Pioneer in Computational Mathematics
A Tribute to Gene Golub
by Steven Leon
On November 16, 2007 the worldwide community of computational mathematicians lost its foremost member. Gene Golub was one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the 20th century. The algorithms he developed form a basic part of all the standard software libraries for scientific computing. We have created an Overview Web page with a brief summary of some of his accomplishments.Beyond his scholarly accomplishments, he was a truly great human being. He was a master at bringing people together. He has done more than anyone else to establish an international community of computational and applied mathematics. Throughout his career he has mentored and nurtured young people and welcomed them into the computational mathematics community.
The students at Stanford's Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (iCME) have set up a Golub Memorial Blog Site for people to express their feelings for Gene and relate their memories of him. It is impossible to measure the impact that Gene Golub has had on the international community, however, by reading the blogs one may be able to get a rough picture of the extent to which Gene has influenced the lives of so many people.
My first contact with Gene was when I wrote to him about visiting Stanford during my first sabbatical leave in the 1977-78 academic year. Gene not only invited me to come, but he indicated that there were many exciting activities planned for the summer of 1977 and he suggested I should plan to come for those also. In the 1970's the Numerical Analysis Group at Stanford was located in a little building called Serra House. There were so many famous visitors passing through, that we now look fondly back at Serra House as one of the great centers for computational mathematics. Gene made all visitors, both famous and not-so-famous, feel part of the community. The students at Serra House were also special. In fact a roster of the students from those years would now read like a Who's Who in computational mathematics. Each week at Serra House there was at least one seminar, followed by wine and cheese at Gene's beautiful home on the Stanford campus and then dinner at a local Chinese restaurant. There were many parties and social activities throughout the year. The atmosphere Gene created made it easy to form friendships and collaborations. A visitor could not help but be inspired to work at a higher level. Gene always made visitors feel welcome and many, like myself, would return to visit again whenever they were able. During my visit I shared an office with Walter Gander. I am grateful to Walter for providing photographs of that wonderful year.
(Photos of Gene Golub and the Serra House visitors and students)