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Stanisław Ulam 1909-1984

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

G. T. Q. Hoare
G. T. Q. Hoare*
Affiliation:
3 Russett Hill, Chalfont St. Peter, Bucks SL9 8JY
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Extract

Prodigiously talented with a remarkable flair for anticipating correct results and initiating fruitful areas of research, Stanislaw Ulam (‘Stan’ to his friends) was an unusual mathematician. The considerable breadth of his preoccupations, even in the halcyon days of his youth in Poland, distinguished him from his peers. Sustained by a supreme self-confidence, Ulam preferred pioneering new fields of mathematics to elaborating the ideas of others. Indeed, impatient with detail he tended to leave technicalities to those with whom he collaborated. Uprooted from his native Poland in his twenties, Ulam was to spend two thirds of his working life associated with or employed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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Articles
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The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 83 , Issue 496 , March 1999, pp. 10 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 1999

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