Professor emeritus of mathematics Robert Osserman died at his Berkeley home Nov. 30. He was 84.
Osserman joined the Stanford faculty in 1955. He served as the Department of Mathematics chair from 1973 to 1979 and the Andrew W. Mellon chair of interdisciplinary studies from 1987 to 1990. In the early 1980s, he helped found the Mathematical Services Research Institute in Berkeley. He served as its deputy director from 1990 to 1995 and helped it become one of the world’s premier research institutions for mathematics.
Osserman’s early research focused on Riemann surfaces and complex analysis. Throughout his career, he conducted groundbreaking analysis of “minimal surfaces,” a geometric concept known for its fundamental significance as well as beauty. His “Survey of Minimal Surfaces,” first published in 1969, remains a classic reference text in the field.
Osserman received his Ph.D. from Harvard. Throughout his career, he held visiting appointments at the University of Colorado, the Courant Institute, Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley. He was a recipient of the Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships. From 1960 to 1961, he headed up Washington, D.C.’s Mathematics branch of the Office of Naval Research.
He authored or co-authored over 70 research papers and served as a thesis supervisor for nine graduate students. In 1985, he received the Dean’s Award for teaching.
“Bob Osserman was my thesis adviser, my colleague and my very dear friend,” said Blaine Lawson, Osserman’s first Ph.D. student and now a professor of mathematics at Stony Brook University. “He was a mentor of tremendous influence in my mathematical development and on my outlook on mathematical life. He was a man of immense erudition and personal warmth and charm.”
Osserman worked to make mathematics more interesting and accessible. In 1993, he helped organize San Francisco’s “Fermat Fest,” a public celebration of the famous proof of Fermat’s last theorem. In 2010, he published two papers on the architecture of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Mo.
Born in 1926 in New York City, he showed early interests in music and science, which he pursued throughout his life. He served in the Air Corps in World War II.
Osserman had lived in Berkeley since the 1980s. He is survived by his first wife, three sons and one grandchild.
–Ellora Israni