Chandler Davis

Horace Chandler Davis (born August 12, 1926[1] in Ithaca, New York[2]) is an American-Canadian mathematician, writer, and educator.

Chandler Davis
Davis in 2011
Born (1926-08-12) August 12, 1926
Ithaca, New York
Alma materHarvard University
Spouse(s)Natalie Zemon Davis
Scientific career
Fieldsmathematics
InstitutionsUniversity of Toronto

He was born in Ithaca, New York, to parents Horace B. Davis and Marian R. Davis. In 1948 he married Natalie Zemon Davis; they have three children. He was a member of the CPUSA and he was dismissed from the University of Michigan and jailed for his beliefs.

He moved to Canada in 1962 and began teaching at the University of Toronto. A lecture in honour of his stand for his beliefs is now held at the university that dismissed him.

Mathematics

In 1950 he received a doctorate in mathematics from Harvard University.

His principal research investigations involve linear algebra and operator theory in Hilbert space. Furthermore, he has made contributions to numerical analysis, geometry, and algebraic logic. He is one of the eponyms of the Davis–Kahan theorem and Bhatia–Davis inequality (along with Rajendra Bhatia). The Davis–Kahan–Weinberger dilation theorem[3] is one of the landmark results in the dilation theory of Hilbert space operators and has found applications in many different areas. A PhD thesis titled "Backward Perturbation and Sensitivity Analysis of Structured Polynomial Eigenvalue Problem" [4] is dedicated to this theorem. Davis has written around eighty research papers in mathematics. Davis was a professor in the mathematics department of University of Michigan, working alongside Wilfred Kaplan.

He is currently one of the co-Editors-in-Chief of the Mathematical Intelligencer. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[5] He is part of the 2019 class of fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics.[6]

Fiction writing

He began his writing career in Astounding Science Fiction in 1946. From 1946 through 1962 he produced a spate of science fiction stories, mostly published there. One of the earliest, published May 1946, was The Nightmare, later the lead story in A Treasury of Science Fiction, edited by Groff Conklin; it argued for a national policy of decentralizing industry to evade nuclear attacks by terrorists. He also issued the fanzine "Blitherings" in the 1940s.

He attended Torcon I, the 6th World Science Fiction Convention in 1948, appeared at the 2010 SFContario science fiction convention,[7] and was Science Guest of Honor at the 2013 SFContario science fiction convention.[8]

Politics
Davis in 1975.

Davis came from a radical family and has identified himself as a socialist and former member of the Communist Party of America.[9]

Davis—along with two other professors, Mark Nickerson and Clement Markert—refused to cooperate with the House Unamerican Activities Committee and was subsequently dismissed from the University of Michigan. Davis was then sentenced to a six-month prison term where he was able to do some research. A paper from this era has the following acknowledgement:

Research supported in part by the Federal Prison System. Opinions expressed in this paper are the author's and are not necessarily those of the Bureau of Prisons.[10]

The Federal government released Davis from prison in 1960.[11] After his release, Davis moved to Canada, where he currently resides.

In 1991, the University of Michigan Senate initiated the annual Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom. Recent speakers have included: Cass Sunstein (2008), Nadine Strossen (2007), Bill Keller (2006), Floyd Abrams (2005), and Noam Chomsky (2004).

Notes
  1. Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent. p. 129. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.
  2. The Nightmare by Chan Davis: About the author
  3. Chandler Davis, W. M. Kahan, and H. F. Weinberger Norm-Preserving Dilations and Their Applications to Optimal Error Bounds, SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 19-3 (1982), pp. 445–469.
  4. B. Adhikari, Backward Perturbation and Sensitivity Analysis of Structured Polynomial Eigenvalue Problems, Ph.D. thesis, Department of Mathematics, IIT Guwahati, Guwahati, India, 2008.
  5. List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2012-11-10.
  6. 2019 Class of AWM Fellows, Association for Women in Mathematics, retrieved 2019-01-08
  7. "Chandler Davis in Fannish Conversation". SFContario 2010 Panel Descriptions Archived November 23, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  8. "Upcoming Events". Analog Science Fiction and Fact Archived 2016-05-09 at the Wayback Machine
  9. Share1163 Hedges, Chris. "The Origin of America’s Intellectual Vacuum" Truth-Out.org November 15, 2010 Archived November 20, 2010, at the Wayback Machine"It wasn’t a cinch I would be in the Communist Party, but in fact I was, starting in 1943 and then resigning soon after on instructions from the party because I was in the military service. This was part of the coexistence of the Communist Party with Roosevelt and the military. It would not disrupt things during the war. When I got out of the Navy I rejoined the Communist Party, but that lapsed in June of 1953. I never got back in touch with them. At the time I was subpoenaed I was technically an ex-Communist, but I did not feel I had left the movement and in some sense I never did."
  10. Page 181 in Davis, Chandler (1963). "An extremum problem for plane convex curves". In Victor L. Klee (ed.). Convexity. Proceedings of Symposia in Pure Mathematics. VII. Providence, Rhode Island: American Mathematical Society. pp. 181–185. MR 0154189. catalog #63-10760.. Excerpt in Google Books.
  11. “Shooting Rats in a Barrel”: Did the Red-hunt Win?
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