Anatole Beck

Anatole Beck (19 March 1930 – 21 December 2014)[1] was an American mathematician.

Anatole Beck
Anatole Beck 2008
Born(1930-03-19)19 March 1930
New York City
Died21 December 2014(2014-12-21) (aged 84)
Madison, Wisconsin
NationalityAmerican
Alma materYale University
Brooklyn College
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
Doctoral advisorShizuo Kakutani

Beck graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1947,[2] studied at Brooklyn College (Bachelor's degree 1951) and in 1956 received his PhD from Yale University under Shizuo Kakutani PhD (On the Random Ergodic theorem).[3] In 1958 he became Assistant Professor and in 1966 Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He married Jewish feminist writer Evelyn Torton Beck in 1954; they had two children before divorcing in 1974.[4][5]

He was a visiting professor at the Technical University of Munich, the London School of Economics and a visiting scholar at the University of Göttingen, University of Warwick, University of London, and the Hebrew University.

Beck's work dealt with ergodic theory, topological dynamics, Probability in Banach spaces, measure theory, search theory, linear search problem, and mathematics in the social sciences.

Union leadership, political activism, and social commentator

Beck was an ardent supporter of unionism and cooperative economics, helping to found the faculty union chapter at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and serving as the Vice President of the Wisconsin Federation of Teachers. He spoke out strongly in favor of academic freedom on campus, and was an early supporter of the free speech rights of the movement against the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Beck made headlines in 1977 when he offered a $100 grant to a "white Quaker female student with financial need" to highlight the University of Wisconsin's policy of accepting gifts with discriminatory conditions attached.[6][7]

Since 2008 he had been a commentator on the Insurgent Radio Kiosk on Madison's community radio station WORT.[8]

In 2009 Beck was interviewed extensively by Robert Lange for the UW-Madison Oral History Program.[9]

Headlines
  • Michael N. Bleicher, Donald W. Crowe: Excursions into Mathematics, AK Peters, 2000 (first 1967)
  • Continuous flow in the plane, Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften, Springer Verlag, 1974 (participation Mirit and Jonathan Lewin)
  • with M. Bleicher: Packing convex sets into a similar set in Konrad Jacobs: Selecta Mathematica, Volume 3, Springer Verlag 1971
  • A paradox. The Tortoise and the Hare, in Konrad Jacobs: Selecta Mathematica, Volume 5, Springer Verlag 1979
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References
  1. "In Memoriam: Anatole Beck". University of Wisconsin Department of Mathematics.
  2. "Stuyvesant High School Math Team 1946".
  3. "Mathematics Genealogy Project - Anatole Beck". Mathematics Genealogy Project.
  4. "Evelyn Torton Beck," Jewish Women's Archive, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/beck-evelyn-torton
  5. "Teacher Commutes via Jet". Wisconsin State Journal. March 26, 1972. p. 62. Retrieved October 30, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. "UW Prof Won't Lift Gift Conditions". Wisconsin State Journal. August 27, 1977. p. 1. Retrieved October 29, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. "Stick to Your Guns, Professor". The Capital Times. September 3, 1977. p. 1. Retrieved October 29, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. "anatole beck commentaries".
  9. "Oral History Interview: Anatole Beck (1057)".
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