A mathematical family man (by Michael Rose)

[This is a talk by Michael Rose at a memorial service for Jonathan Borwein in Newcastle, Australia on 21 September 2016.]

It was my very great privilege to be one of Jon’s students for 5 years, one of over 70 postgraduate and postdoctoral scholars who Jon took under his wing, and after speaking with a few others it’s clear that you can take what I’m about to say and more or less multiply it by 70, there’s a lot of shared experience. You have heard much about Jon the extraordinary mathematician, and now I would like to tell you about

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The Midwest Optimization meeting dedicated to Jon’s memory

We have just finished Midwest Optimization meeting dedicated to Jon’s memory. Here is the conference website: http://www.math.msu.edu/~yanm/MOM16.

and a nice poster: http://users.math.msu.edu/users/yanm/MOM16/Poster-MOM2016.pdf

Boris Mordukhovich Distinguished University Professor Fellow, AMS and SIAM http://math.wayne.edu/~boris

My older and much wiser brother (by Brailey Sims)

[Talk by Brailey Sims at the Jon Borwein Memorial Service, 21 September 2016, Newcastle, Australia.]

This is a sad yet vital occasion. It serves to remind us of Jon the person and Jon the achiever and to look forward to the massive legacy he has left for us. But, it also helps drive home the stark and dreadful reality that we are now living in a post Jon world. As Jon steamed full speed-ahead we have for many years gyred and gymbled — two of Jon’s favourite words — in the bow waves he generated, now the juggernaut has passed

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Jonathan M. Borwein: Homo sapiens, Homo ludens

[This is a condensed version of an article written by Michel Théra, to appear in the Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications.]

Jonathan Borwein left us suddenly on August 2, 2016 at age 65. He leaves his wife Judith, three children Naomi, Rachel and Tova; five grand children Jakob Joseph, Noah Erasmus, Skye, Zoe and Taj. Jonathan Borwein was born in 1951 in St. Andrews, Scotland, to a family of intellectuals. In fact, both of his parents belonged to the world of research.His mother Bessie was an anatomist while his father, David, was a mathematician, holding a position in the

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Jon Borwein: A personal reflection

Jon Borwein died on August 2, 2016. His untimely passing has deprived us all of a singular and brilliant mind and an inspirational intellectual leader, and I have lost a close personal friend. Rather than a formal memorial, my words are a personal reflection on my coauthor (of fifteen papers and a book), a mentor to whom I owe my career.

Jon’s mathematical breadth and energy make a fascinating but bewildering picture, extending far beyond traditional optimization, and challenging to sketch. He delighted in collaboration, and many of us knew first-hand his research style: whirling, exuberant, defamiliarizing, endlessly curious, elegant,

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Letter from the Editor: Jonathan M. Borwein (1951-2016)

[This is by Scott Chapman, Editor of the American Mathematical Monthly. It is scheduled to appear in the November 2016 issue of the Monthly.]

August 2, 2016 was a difficult day for us at the Monthly, as we learned of the untimely death of Monthly Associate Editor Jonathan Borwein. Many of you knew Jon as an internationally acclaimed mathematician. One of the world’s leading scholars in Experimental Mathematics, his long publication list spanned the breadth of pure and applied mathematics. Cited over 22,000 times (according to Google Scholar), Jon was perhaps the world’s leading authority on the study of pi.

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Jon made us big

I first met Jon Borwein at Goldberg’s restaurant on Darby Street in Newcastle. I had arrived in Australia for the first time in the midst of one of its characteristic week-long winter storms. Having not yet slept, I was worried I would be too tired to carry on a lively and intelligent conversation with him. I confided this to my co-advisor who reassured me, “Don’t worry; he’ll take care of that for you.”

I always dislike referring to anyone as a “genius” because I worry that doing so will reinforce for my students the mistaken belief that only certain, special

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Farewell to Jonathan Borwein, Doctor Pi

[This is an English translation of a tribute to Jon Borwein, written by Francisco Aragon Artacho, which appeared in El Pais, the highest-circulation newspaper in Spain. The original is here.]

On August 2nd the heart of one of the most brilliant and influential mathematicians of our time stopped beating. Professor Jonathan Borwein unexpectedly died when he was 65 years young. Jon, as he preferred to be called was passionate about mathematics: pure, applied and computational. Nowadays, academic researchers in general, and mathematicians in particular, tend to highly specialize. Without realizing it, we end up becoming experts: someone who knows absolutely

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Transcends the boundaries of disciplines

Very few mathematicians manage to transcend the boundaries of more than one mathematical discipline and make substantial contributions to several areas of Mathematics. Jon was undeniably one of them. He was a paragon of Experimental Mathematics, Functional Analysis, Optimization and other areas. His research work has already inspired thousands of individual researchers and will remain as a testament to this generation and to the coming ones. [Ilias Kotsireas, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada]

You’re not where you were, but you’re everywhere we are

It was August 2nd, 2016 at 11:23 pm (European Time) when I received the sad news. I couldn’t believe it and I had read the email twice in the hope that the information was wrong. I couldn’t sleep all night remembering the last time we met with Jon in Cartagena in June 2016 and particularly in all details my last visit to him in Newcastle in February 2015. I will never forget the warm hospitality with which I had been welcomed. I was also thinking about the unfinished paper that we started together with Jon and Lionel entitled: “How elegant

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