Nearly every day I read the Wikipedia to learn about notable events in history and the birthdays of notable people. When I do this, I generally also look for the oldest notable person who is still with us.
Sometimes it’s someone I’ve heard of, but never someone I actually know personally. Until today.
According to the Wikipedia, the oldest living notable person in the world is Peter Lax, my colleague at the Courant institute at NYU.
Peter turns 98 today. And I realize now that I have known him for more than forty years.
He has led an amazing life, and has been responsible quite a few ground breaking mathematical discoveries. But it hasn’t all been about math.
In 1970 a group of student protestors brought bombs into the Courant computer room and threatened to blow up the institute’s supercomputer. Peter, together with some colleagues, managed to defuse the bombs and save the supercomputer.
Today, a half century later, we have it easier than he did back then. For one thing, today’s students don’t try to blow up our school’s computers.
At least not yet.