Solomon Marcus

Solomon Marcus
Solomon Marcus in 2007.
Born	(1925-03-01)1 March 1925 Bacău, Romania
Died	17 March 2016(2016-03-17) (aged 91) Bucharest, Romania
Nationality	Romanian
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	University of Bucharest
Alma mater	University of Bucharest
Doctoral advisor	Miron Nicolescu
Doctoral students	Cristian S. Calude Gheorghe Păun Ileana Streinu

Solomon Marcus (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈsolomon ˈmarkus]; 1 March 1925 – 17 March 2016) was a Romanian mathematician, member of the Mathematical Section of the Romanian Academy (full member since 2001) and emeritus professor of the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Mathematics. His main research was in the fields of mathematical analysis, mathematical and computational linguistics and computer science, but he also published numerous papers on various cultural topics: poetics, linguistics, semiotics, philosophy and history of science and education.

He was born in Bacău, Romania, to Sima and Alter Marcus, a Jewish family of tailors. From an early age he had to live through dictatorships, war, infringements on free speech and free thinking as well as anti-Semitism. At the age of 16 or 17 he started tutoring younger pupils in order to help his family financially.

He graduated from Ferdinand I High School in 1944, and completed his studies at the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Science, Department of Mathematics, in 1949. He continued tutoring throughout college and later recounted in an interview that he had to endure hunger during those years and that till the age of 20 he only wore hand-me-downs from his older brothers.

He obtained his PhD in Mathematics in 1956, with a thesis on the Monotonic functions of two variables, written under the direction of Miron Nicolescu. He was appointed Lecturer in 1955, Associate Professor in 1964, and became a Professor in 1966 (Emeritus in 1991).