HW
Science & Medicine

Harold Widom

Who

Harold Widom · Science & Medicine

What

Toeplitz operators; the Tracy-Widom distribution

When

1932, Newark, New Jersey, United States — 2021, Santa Cruz, California, United States

Where

United States

Biography

Harold Widom is recognized among Jewish contributors to Science & Medicine — Toeplitz operators; the Tracy-Widom distribution

How & why

Widom was a mathematician known for deep work on Toeplitz and integral operators and, with Craig Tracy, for the Tracy–Widom distribution, which describes the fluctuations of the largest eigenvalues of random matrices and appears widely in probability and physics. He was a longtime professor at UC Santa Cruz. He was born into a Jewish family in Newark; his brother was the chemist Benjamin Widom.

Sources & external links

Verify and go deeper with these external references.

Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Mathematics

Contributions & Sources

Toeplitz operators; the Tracy-Widom distribution

1932

Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Mathematics