Paul F. Byrd
Paul Francis Byrd ( 1918 - 1991 ) was an American applied mathematician.
Byrd, who is of African American origins, attended Lincoln High School in Kansas City and studied at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago (Masters degrees). He intended to do a PhD in mathematics, but was drafted to the Tuskegee Airmen (an African-American aviation unit) as a meteorologist during World War II and was wounded in Italy in 1944. He then taught as an Associate Professor at Fisk University in Nashville before joining NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California as a scientist . In 1958 he was on a sabbatical year at the University of Hamburg, where he dealt with formulas for special functions. There he married his German wife Isolde. He then returned to NASA, teaching on the side at San José State University , to which he switched entirely as a professor in 1974.
Byrd was an expert on the formulaic treatment of elliptic integrals and other special functions.
He also wrote many articles in the Fibonacci Quarterly and contributions to the problem-solving sections of math journals. He was also considered a good chess player.
Fonts
- with Morris D. Friedman : Handbook of Elliptic Integrals for Engineers and Scientists, Grundlehren der Mathematischen Wissenschaften 67, Springer 1954
Web links
- Paul F. Byrd Scholarship
- Chicago alumni at the Tuskegee Airmen (with photo of Byrd from that time)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Friedman received his PhD in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1952. He later translated mathematics books from Russian
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Byrd, Paul F. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Byrd, Paul Francis (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American applied mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1918 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1991 |