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Robert Israel “Bob” Jewett (1937–2022)

2023; American Mathematical Society; Volume: 70; Issue: 05 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1090/noti2688

1088-9477

Walter R. Bloom, Richard J. Gardner, Al Hales, Joel Spencer, Terence Tao, B. P. Weiss,

Bob" Jewett was born on December 14, 1937 in Providence, Rhode Island.His father, Abraham, had emigrated from Poland/Ukraine to Canada in 1921 and then to the USA in 1923, while his mother, Mame (Mary) née Katz, was born in Providence to parents from Russia.In 1946, Bob's family, including his older sister Rosalie, moved to Venice, California, a relocation partially motivated by Bob's problems with hay fever.Bob's much younger brother Phil was born in 1948.Bob attended the local public schools and was very interested, while at Venice High School, not only in physics and mathematics, but also animals and insects.In 1955, he started college at Caltech.There was no zoology major, so he focused on physics and mathematics, eventually the latter.In 1958, he received Honorable Mention for his individual performance in the nationwide Putnam competition in mathematics, helping the Caltech team to place third in the nation.Bob also stood out as a volleyball and track and field star.Bob graduated from Caltech in 1959 and went to the University of Oregon for graduate work in mathematics.Before this move, however, he worked for the summer at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in the coding theory section headed by Solomon Golomb.He was also employed there in the summers of 1960 and 1961.During that time he wrote several research papers, one containing the combinatorial Hales-Jewett theorem [HJ63].