Donald Newman, American Mathematician and Friend of John Nash

Donald J. (D. J.) Newman (July 27, 1930 – March 28, 2007) was an American mathematician and professor, excelling at the Putnam mathematics competition while an undergraduate at City College of New York and New York University, and later receiving his PhD from Harvard University in 1953.^[2]

Newman was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1930, and studied at New York's Stuyvesant High School.^[3] When he was 14 he worked with Dubble Bubble Gum to help solve the statistical question of how often a gum purchaser would receive the same joke for their gum wrapper.^[4] He was an avid problem-solver, and as an undergraduate was a Putnam Fellow all three years he took part in the Putnam math competition; only the third person to attain that feat.^[5] His mathematical specialties included complex analysis, approximation theory and number theory. In 1980 he found a short proof of the prime number theorem, which can now be found in his textbook on Complex analysis.^[6]

Newman was a friend and associate of John Nash.^{[7]:144–145} His career included posts as a Professor of Mathematics at MIT, Brown University, Yeshiva University, Temple University and a distinguished chair at Bar Ilan University in Israel.^[8] He held government and industry positions at Avco, Republic Aviation, Bell Laboratories, IBM and the NSA.^{[citation needed]}

Newman's love of problem solving comes through in his writing; his published output as a mathematician includes 150 papers and five books. He taught numerous students over the years, including Robert Feinerman, Jonah Mann, Eli Passow, Louis Raymon, Joseph Bak, Shmuel Weinberger, and Gerald Weinstein at Yeshiva University, and Bo Gao, Don Kellman, Jonathan Knappenberger, and Yuan Xu at Temple University.