Meinhard E. Mayer

Meinhard Edwin Mayer (March 18, 1929 – December 11, 2011) was a Romanian–born American Professor Emeritus of Physics and Mathematics at the University of California, Irvine, which he joined in 1966.

Biography

He was born on March 18, 1929, in Cernăuți. He experienced both the Soviet occupation of Northern Bukovina and, as a Jew, deportation to the Transnistria Governorate.^[1] He received his Ph.D. from the University of Bucharest in 1957, where he taught until 1961.

He then taught at Brandeis University and Indiana University before moving to the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in 1966, where he taught until his retirement. He also took sabbaticals to various institutes, including the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques and MIT.

He had a deep interest in music, and in Yiddish language and literature.

He died in Newport Beach, California, on December 11, 2011. He was survived by his wife Ruth, his children Elma Mayer and Niels Mayer, and his grandchildren Jonathan Mayer, Juniper Woodbury, and Moss Woodbury.

Research

His research interests ranged from geometric methods in gauge theory, to the application of wavelets in turbulence. He was an early contributor (1958) to the theory of vector-bosons (W and Z bosons) and electro-weak unification, which later became the Standard model, and an early advocate of the use of fiber bundles in gauge theory.

He was a co-author (with Gerald Jay Sussman and Jack Wisdom) of Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001 ISBN 0-262-19455-4

Notes

References

• Lie Groupoids versus Principal Bundles in Gauge Theories, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Differential-Geometric Methods in Physics, L.-L. Chau and W. Nahm, Eds., Plenum Press, 1990.
• From Poisson Groupoids to Quantum Groupoids, and Back, in Proceedings of the XIX International Conference on Differential-Geometric Methods in Physics, R. Cianci and U. Bruzzo, Eds. Rapallo, 1990; 12 pages, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, 1991.
• Wavelet Transforms and Atmospheric Turbulence, with Carl A. Friehe and Lonnie H. Hudgins, Physical Review Letters, 71, 3279-3282 (November 15, 1993)

External links

• Meinhard E. Mayer at the Mathematics Genealogy Project[1]
• Obituary in Physics Today
• Web Page (somewhat obsolete) Archived 2007-03-26 at the Wayback Machine
• Faculty Profile
• Paul Celan Article
• An article about the 1908 Yiddish Language Conference (Yiddish and English)
• QuickTime version (with sound) of a talk On Yiddish and German Poets from Czernowitz at the 2008 La Jolla Yiddish Conference
• Slides (without sound) of the talk On Yiddish and German Poets from Czernowitz at the 2008 La Jolla Yiddish Conference