1952-2004

We were deeply saddened by the sudden loss of our friend and colleague, George Majda, on February 8, 2004. He was a member of the Department of Mathematics at Ohio State University for eighteen years.

He was an applied mathematician in the broadest sense, drawing inspiration from such diverse fields as biology, fluid dynamics, plasma physics and seismology. His research was characterised by bringing a variety of analytical and computational techniques to bear on problems of essential scientific interest.

George Madja was born on November 6, 1952 in East Chicago, Indiana, the son of Mary and Andrew Majda. He was educated at Purdue University and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, where he wrote a dissertation under the direction of Hans Otto Kreiss. After graduating from NYU in 1980, he was a Bateman Instructor at the California Institute of Technology and then an assistant professor at Brown University. In 1986 he joined the Department of Mathematics at Ohio State University as an associate professor and was promoted to professor in 1997. He held visiting appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study (1992-1993) and Duke University (1994-1995).

He was an expert in the theoretical and numerical solution of differential equations and was an active member of the department's applied mathematics group. He supervised the doctoral dissertation of Musheng Wei (Brown University, 1986) and the Master's degrees of Fereshteh Khorrami (Ohio State University, 1987) and John Hamilton (Ohio State University, 1988).

He is survived by his son Andrew Bingham Majda of Lexington KY, mother Mary Majda of Whiting IN, sister Terri Biel of Highland IN, brothers Andy Majda of Princeton NJ and John Majda of Los Angeles CA.

Department of Mathematics