Richard Duffin
| Richard Duffin | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1909 Chicago, Illinois |
| Died | October 29, 1996 (aged 87) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions |
Carnegie Mellon University Purdue University |
| Alma mater | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
| Doctoral advisor |
Harold Mott-Smith David Bourgin |
| Doctoral students |
Raoul Bott Elmor Peterson Hans Weinberger |
| Known for | Work on electrical network theory DKP algebra Duffin–Schaeffer conjecture |
| Notable awards | John von Neumann Theory Prize (1982) |
Richard James Duffin (1909 – October 29, 1996) was an American physicist, known for his contributions to electrical transmission theory and to the development of geometric programming and other areas within operations research.
Duffin obtained a BSc in physics at the University of Illinois, where he was elected to Sigma Xi in 1932. He stayed at Illinois for his PhD, which was advised by Harold Mott-Smith and David Bourgin, producing a thesis entitled Galvanomagnetic and Thermomagnetic Phenomena (1935).
Duffin lectured at Purdue University and Illinois before joining the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C. during World War II. His wartime work was devoted to the development of navigational equipment and mine detectors. In 1946, he became Professor of Mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University. He wrote a letter of recommendation to Princeton University for John Forbes Nash, Jr., later a Nobel laureate. Duffin and his student Raoul Bott developed network synthesis filters when the given transfer function is a positive-real function in 1949.
Duffin would remain at Carnegie Mellon until his retirement in 1988. Duffin was also a consultant to Westinghouse Electric Corporation.
Duffin was inducted to the National Academy of Sciences in 1972 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984. He was joint winner of the 1982 John von Neumann Theory Prize, and winner of Sigma Xi's Monie A. Ferst Award for 1984 in recognition of his ability as a teacher and communicator.
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