Abe Gelbart

(courtesy of Steve Gelbart)

 December 22, 1911 -- September 7, 1994

Abe Gelbart was an American mathematician, the founding Dean of the Belfer Graduate School of Science at Yeshiva University, and the namesake of the International Research Institute of Mathematical Sciences at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel.

Born in Paterson New Jersey to immigrants from Poland, Gelbart left high school at 14 to help support his family. At 16, on Sundays, he continued studying by visiting the Mathematics Section of the New York Public Library where he met Professor Jekuthiel Ginsburg, director of Yeshiva University’s Institute of Mathematics. Ginsburg, impressed by this young man’s devotion to Math, suggested that they switch their weekend Sunday to Ginsburg’s home; there Gelbart could also begin working for Ginsburg’s Journal Scripta Mathematica which Ginsburg edited. During this time Gelbart worked all the problems in an Advanced Calculus book and found a new construction of an ancient geometry problem which Ginsburg published in Scripta.

At 23 Gelbart gave up his day time job on weekdays and – with Ginsburg’s help – entered Dalhousie University in Canada. No university in America would accept a student without a high school diploma and even at Dalhousie it took some pursuance. There were also many students - and many professors – who knew Gelbart was Jewish and treated him badly. Nevertheless, after three years at Dalhousie, he was able to make up those high school credits and fulfill the normal courses for a Bachelor and Master degree in 1938. Moreover, there was a Professor who was interested in Gelbart and agreed to guide him in advanced work in mathematics, somewhat similar to the way Ginsburg did. This Professor was a friend of Norbert Wiener at MIT and wrote Wiener about his accepting Gelbart, with a scholarship. Wiener did, and by 1940, Gelbart finished his Ph.D. thesis Growth Properties of Functions of two Complex Variables.

After his doctorate, Gelbart had temporary positions in North Carolina State College (1940-42), Brown University (1942) and Langley Field Research Center (1942-1943). It was while at Brown that he started joint work with Lipman Bers on sigma-monogenic functions, which later developed into the theory of pseudo-analytic functions. 

In 1943, Gelbart was appointed to Syracuse University; there he brought Bers (in 1945) and Bers’s supervisor in Prague Charles Loewner (in 1946). 

In 1947-48, Gelbart was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton New Jersey, meeting for the first time Albert Einstein, Paul Dirac, Paul Erdos, Herman Weyl, Atle Selberg, and Harsh-Chandra. At that time, he became friendly for life with Selberg and Dirac. In 1948, he brought back Selberg for a year at Syracuse, and in 1951-52, Gelbart and his family spent the year in Norway (where Selberg came from).

In 1958, Gelbart left Syracuse when he was appointed director of mathematics at Yeshiva University. This position meant a lot to Gelbart since it was the position that his teacher Jekuthiel Ginsburg had until his death in 1957; not only did Gelbart take over Ginsburg’s position at Yeshiva, he also took over the role of Editor of Scripta Mathematica. In 1959, he was the founding Dean of the Belfer Graduate School of Science at Yeshiva, and in the 1960’s the Belfer School ran a series of national conferences attended by scientists from all over the world and published many (books under the auspices of Scripta Mathematica) that resulted from these conferences.

Gelbart retired from Yeshiva University in 1979, and was made Distinguished Professor at Bard College (north of New York City). At the same time, Emanuel Rackman, who was an old Yeshiva friend of Gelbart from the 1960’s, was beginning his Presidency of Bar-Ilan and saw Gelbart named a trustee. Thus began a long and trusting relationship between Gelbart and Bar-Ilan University. In particular, in January 1983 a Conference dedicating the Professor Abe Gelbart Chair in Mathematics of Bar-Ilan University was held, featuring Charles Fefferman and others.

In addition to the honors described above, Gelbart received an honorary degree from Dalhousie University in 1972 and an honorary degree from Bar-Ilan University in 1985. In 1987, Bar-Ilan University named its Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences after Gelbart in recognition of his highly successful effort to obtain external funding for mathematical research.