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Mathematician John Todd Dies at Age 96


By David Worthington
June 29, 2007 —  John Todd, a pioneer in numerical analysis, died June 21 in his home at Pasadena, Calif., at age 96. Todd had a profound impact on modern-day mathematics, and his contributions are widely viewed as a precursor to modern computer science.

Todd was born near Belfast, Ireland, in 1911 and received his BSc degree from Queen's University. In 1931, he attended St. John's College at Cambridge University for graduate studies and was a prot?g? of renowned mathematicians. Todd met his wife Olga Taussky-Todd, a matrix and number theorist, while working at King’s College in London.

The events of World War II shaped the lives of an entire generation, including Todd’s. He joined the war effort in 1939, when Britain declared war on Germany, and worked at the British Admiralty, researching ways to protect ships against enemy torpedoes.

As the war drew to a close, Todd and his colleagues investigated rumors that mathematicians were being held captive at the Mathematical Research Institute at Oberwolfach in Germany’s Black Forest. Todd declared the university British territory, thereby saving valuable research and earning the nickname “Savior of Oberwolfach.”

Todd recalled that the incident was “probably the best thing I ever did for mathematics."

In peacetime, Todd moved to the United States with Olga and helped found the National Applied Mathematical Laboratories at UCLA, a department of the National Bureau of Standards (NBS). They later moved to NBS headquarters in Washington, D.C., helped establish the field of high-speed computer programming and analysis, and became U.S. citizens.

Todd’s later years were spent at Caltech, developing and teaching courses on mathematics. His courses in numerical analysis and numeric algebra are credited as playing a key role in scientific computing.

Caltech has Todd’s biography on its Web site.



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