Dan Shanks
(by Duncan Buell)
Dan Shanks was a pioneer in computational mathematics.
Trained as a physicist, he began his career at Aberdeen Proving Ground
and then the Naval Ordnance Laboratory during World War II.
He continued his career with the Navy at the Computation and
Mathematics Department of the Naval Ship R and D Laboratories
at the David Taylor Model Basin.
He is probably most famous for his computation with John Wrench,
published in Mathematics of Computation in 1962,
of pi to 100,000 decimal places.
Born, as he put it, on the 17th day of the 17th year of the
20th century, he died on 6 September 1996.
Dan served as an editor of Mathematics of Computation
from 1959 until his death and was also the compiler of the
Unpublished Mathematical Tables.
He was gifted in computational techniques and tricks and invented a
number of algorithms simply to be able to do sophisticated computations
on the programmable calculators of the 1970s.
A special issue of Mathematics of Computation appeared in 1987
in honor of his 70th birthday.
Dan was a unique individual.
There were times when I thought I might be the only person on the planet
with whom he was on speaking terms, and there were times when he would
decide that he wasn't on speaking terms with me.
But as Hugh Williams has put it in his obituary of Dan, he was
"a remarkably talented mathematician, an innovative editor, an
indefatigable correspondent, an occasional curmudgeon, and a marvelous
raconteur. The world of mathematics, particularly computational
number theory, is much poorer for his loss."
I have given Dan's name to the Beowulf machine at USC in memory of the
deep thanks that I am compelled to express to him for help and guidance
throughout my career.
Obituary for
Daniel Shanks from the Notices of the American Mathematical Society
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