Founding of the Victor L. Shapiro Distinguished Lecture
The Victor L. Shapiro Distinguished Lecture in Mathematics was made possible by a generous donation from Victor and Florence Shapiro. It recoginizes the life, legacy, service, and important scientific contributions of our esteemed colleague.
Victor L. Shapiro
Distinguished Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus
UC Riverside
1924-2013
Professor Shapiro was born in October 1924, in Chicago, IL, to Joseph E. Shapiro and Anna Grossman Shapiro. He served our country in the Second World War and was awarded the Combat Infantry Badge in September 1944 for action on the South Pacific island of Bougainville. He was in the 6th wave of a beachhead landing on Cebu in April 1945, and saw action as a combat medic with the 132nd infantry regiment in the ensuing campaign.
After the end of the Second World War and with the help of the G.I. Bill, Professor Shapiro began his undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago in June 1946. He was awarded his B.Sc. in 1947, and his M.Sc. in 1949, both at the University of Chicago. He was awarded his doctorate in mathematics in 1952 from the University of Chicago, under the direction of Professor Antoni Zygmund. His dissertation dealt with the localization theory of multiple trigonometric functions.
Professor Shapiro was an expert on trigonometric series and differential equations. He was internationally recognized for having solved a number of difficult problems in analysis [see the introduction to Contemporary Mathematics, Vol. 208, Editors: Michel L. Lapidus (coordinating editor); Lawrence H. Harper, Adolfo J. Rumbos]. He held academic positions at Rutgers University (1952-1960), the University of Oregon (1960-1964), and he spent three years at the Institute for Advanced Study. He joined UCR in 1964, where he worked for 46 years until his retirement in 2010. He published more than 100 papers during his long and productive career, and he was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003. In 2012, he was named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
Professor Shapiro was very active even late in life-His book "Fourier Series in Several Variables with Applications to Partial Differential Equations" was published in 2011, when he was 86. He made outstanding contributions not only to research in mathematics, but also to the exposition of mathematics, teaching, and mentorship. In 1964, the National Science foundation awarded Professor Shapiro for his expository paper Fourier Series in Several Variables that appeared in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. He supervised 20 doctoral students in his career.
At the time of his death in 2013, Professor Shapiro was survived by his wife, Florence, to whom he was happily married for nearly 65 years. He was also survived by four children, thirteen grandchildren, and a brother and sister.