by Jim Fill
Professor Alan Goldman was born on March 2, 1932, in New York, New York. An
expert in operations research -- the use of mathematics to improve decisions on
the design and operation of complex systems -- whose favorite application areas
include facility siting, transportation systems, and mathematical game theory,
Professor Goldman grew up in Brooklyn, New York (within walking distance of the
Coney Island amusement district) and received his B.A. from Brooklyn College in
mathematics and physics in 1952. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in
mathematics from Princeton University in 1954 and 1956, respectively; his
dissertation area was topology, and the title of his dissertation is "A Cech
theory of fundamental groups and covering spaces." From 1956 to 1961 he was an
evening lecturer at American University and Catholic University of America, but his principal pre-Hopkins affiliation, from 1956 to 1979, was with the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology), where he was founder and Chief of Operations Research and also Deputy Chief of Applied Mathematics. He has been a faculty member in our Department of Mathematical Sciences since 1979, and it is with today's "Goldmanfest" that we mark his retirement from full-time duties. (Let it be noted that Professor Goldman will teach two courses next academic year in his new status as Professor Emeritus.) Professor Goldman holds several awards, including a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal presented in 1976 and election in 1989 to the highly prestigious National Academy of Engineering. Professor Goldman married Cynthia Timberg in 1955; their son, Peter H. Goldman, born in 1958, is Federal Sales Manager, Civilian Agencies, for Secure Computing Corporation in Vienna, Virginia. We are delighted that both Cynthia Goldman and Peter Goldman are present today.
In his career, Professor Goldman has published over 100 papers and supervised nearly 200 more. At Hopkins, he has supervised 12 (soon to be 13) dissertations, and we are honored that (a remarkably diverse) four of his former students have returned to the department today to speak about work they have done in their own careers.