Obituary
Professor Emeritus Meyer Jerison, a major figure in the
Mathematics Department and at the University, died on March 31, 1995.
Born in Bialystok, Poland on November 28, 1922, Jerison came to the
United States in 1929. He received his primary and secondary education
in the New York city public schools and recieved a bachelor's degree in
mathematics and physics from the City College of New York in 1944. He
earned a master's degree in applied mathematics from Brown University in
1947 and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1950.
From 1944 to 1946, Jerison worked at the National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor of NASA, on the fluid dynamics of
turbines and compressors. From 1949 to 1951, he was a Research
Instructor at the University of Illinois. In 1951 he joined the
mathematics department at Purdue as an assistant professor and became a
full professor in 1960. He retired in 1991 with the title of Professor
Emeritus. In the course of his career, Jerison also held visiting
positions at the University of Paris, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem,
the University of California at Berkeley, and the Courant Institute of
Mathematical Sciences.
Meyer Jerison's principle research interest was functional analysis, with
emphasis on function algebras. Together with Leonard Gillman, he
authored one of the classics in the field, Rings of Continuous
Functions. Nine students wrote Ph.D. theses under his direction.
His mathematical interests and knowledge were very broad, extending beyond
functional analysis. This, and his general judgement, were recognized
in his appointment as Book Review Editor of the Bulletin of the American
Mathematical Society from 1980 to 1985.
Undergraduate education was also a serious concern for Jerison. He was a
member of several committees and panels of CUPM, the Committee on the
Undergraduate Program in Mathematics, which was a project of the
profession in the late 1960's and early 1970's to upgrade all aspects of
undergraduate mathmatics. He was very active in the MAA, the
Mathematical Association of America, serving as Vice Chairman and
Chairman of the Indiana Section and on the Board of Governors of the
Association. He was also an MAA Visiting Lecturer. The MAA Visiting
Lecturer Program provided funds for research mathmaticians to lecture and
visit with mathematics undergraduates at four year colleges. On the
local level, Jerison coached the Purdue Putnam team for several years, an
activity that he continued after his retirement.
Meyer Jerison played a very important role in the development of the
Purdue Mathematics Department. In 1960 he and several other young faculty
members engineered a revolution which resulted in the orientation of the
department being changed from service to the teaching of undergraduate and
graduate level mathematics and to research. This was an important step
toward the department's becoming a major research department. From 1965
to 1969, a period of expansion in graduate education in mathmatics,
Jerison chaired the Graduate Committee, which is responsible for the
content of the graduate program and the recruitment of graduate
students. From 1969 to 1975, Jerison provided strong leadership to the
department as its Head. He viewed the primary responsibilities of a
department head to be the recruitment, retention, and promotion of the
most talented and productive mathematicians that could be gotten. He
approached these tasks eagerly, with thoroughness, objectivity,
toughness, and fairness. In personnel decisions, he always recognized
unequivocal evidence of excellence and achievement. Indeed, these traits
were characteristic of Jerison in all of his activities, professional and
personal. After his tenure as Department Head, his advice and counsel on
major issues confronting the department were often solicited.
Meyer Jerison also served Purdue University in many ways. His most
notable contributions were his leadership in establishing the University
Senate and in chartering the Purdue Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. These
were tasks requiring years of negotiations and seemingly countless
meetings and discussions.
Professor Jerison is survived by his wife, Miriam; his son, Michael, a
professor of economics at SUNY Albany; his son, David, a professor of
mathematics at MIT; his brother, Harry; his sister, Jean Blum; and three
grandchildren.
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