Richard Duffin

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Richard Duffin
Born1909
Duffin–Schaeffer conjecture
Bott–Duffin synthesis
AwardsJohn von Neumann Theory Prize (1982)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
InstitutionsCarnegie Mellon University
Purdue University
Doctoral advisorHarold Mott-Smith
David Bourgin
Doctoral studentsRaoul Bott
Hans Weinberger

Richard James Duffin (1909 – October 29, 1996) was an American physicist, known for his contributions to electrical transmission theory and to the development of geometric programming and other areas within operations research.

Education and career

Duffin obtained a

PhD, which was advised by Harold Mott-Smith and David Bourgin, producing a thesis entitled Galvanomagnetic and Thermomagnetic Phenomena (1935).[2]

Duffin lectured at

mine detectors. In 1946, he became professor of mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University.[1]
He wrote a letter of recommendation to Princeton University for
John Forbes Nash, Jr., later a Nobel laureate. In 1949, Duffin and his student Raoul Bott developed a generalized method of synthesising networks without transformers which were required in earlier methods.[4]

In 1941, Duffin and A. C. Schaeffer put forward[5] a conjecture in metric diophantine approximation which was resolved in 2020 by James Maynard and Dimitris Koukoulopoulos.[6]

In 1967 Duffin joined with

mathematical programming by introducing a generalization of polynomials to posynomials for engineering applications. Impressed with its innovations, a reviewer wrote, "common sense, ingenuity and originality in applying first principles are still competitive with other creative forms of the intellect."[7] The methods of geometric programming are sometimes adapted for convex optimization
.

Duffin would remain at Carnegie Mellon until his retirement in 1988.[3] Duffin was also a consultant to Westinghouse Electric Corporation.[3]

Duffin was inducted to the

National Academy of Sciences in 1972[8] and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974[9].[10] He was joint winner of the 1982 John von Neumann Theory Prize,[11] and winner of Sigma Xi's Monie A. Ferst Award for 1984 in recognition of his ability as a teacher and communicator.[1]
He was elected to the 2002 class of Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.[12]

Selected publications

  • 1949: (with Raoul Bott) "Impedance synthesis without the use of transformers", Journal of Applied Physics 20:816.
  • 1952: (with A. C. Schaeffer) Duffin, R. J.; Schaeffer, A. C. (1952). "A class of nonharmonic Fourier series". Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 72 (2): 341–366.
    MR 0047179
    .
  • 1953: (with R. Bott) Bott, R.; Duffin, R. J. (1953). "On the algebra of networks".
    MR 0056573
    .
  • 1956: Duffin, R. J. (1956). "Exponential decays in nonlinear networks". Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 7 (6): 1094–1106.
    MR 0083366
    .
  • 1959: Duffin, R. J. (1959). "An analysis of the Wang algebra of networks". Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 93: 114–131.
    MR 0109161
    .
  • 1962: Duffin, R. J. (1962). "The reciprocal of a Fourier series".
    MR 0145259
    .
  • 1967: (with Elmor Peterson and
    John Wiley & Sons
  • 1974: Duffin, R. J. (1974). "Some problems of mathematics and science".
    MR 0359436
    .

See also

References

  1. ^
    JSTOR 27852522
    .
  2. ^ Richard Duffin at the Mathematics Genealogy Project.
  3. ^ a b c Richard J. Duffin from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
  4. ^ John H. Hubbard (2010) "The Bott-Duffin Synthesis of Electrical Circuits", pages 33–40 in A Celebration of the Mathematical Legacy of Raoul Bott, P. Robert Kotiuga editor, CRM Proceedings and Lecture Notes #50, American Mathematical Society
  5. Zbl 0025.11002
    . Retrieved 2023-12-28.
  6. S2CID 195874052
    .
  7. doi:10.1137/1010047
    .
  8. ^ Dicke, William (November 10, 1996). "Richard Duffin, 87, Researcher In Many Areas of Mathematics". The New York Times. Retrieved March 30, 2015.
  9. ^ https://www.amacad.org/person/richard-james-duffin
  10. JSTOR 3785536
    .
  11. ISBN 978-1-441-96280-5
    .
  12. ^ Fellows: Alphabetical List, Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, retrieved 2019-10-09
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Duffin&oldid=1213532907"