Birth Name: | Ralph Herman Abraham |
Birth Date: | July 4, 1936 |
Birth Place: | Burlington, Vermont |
Nationality: | American |
Fields: | Mathematics |
Workplaces: | University of California, Santa Cruz |
Alma Mater: | University of Michigan |
Thesis Title: | Discontinuities in General Relativity |
Thesis Url: | https://search.lib.umich.edu/catalog/record/002145032 |
Thesis Year: | 1960 |
Doctoral Advisor: | Nathan Coburn |
Ralph Herman Abraham (born July 4, 1936) is an American mathematician. Since 1968, he has been a member of the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he is currently professor emeritus of mathematics.
Abraham earned his BSE (1956), MS (1958) and PhD (1960) from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Santa Cruz, he held positions at the University of California, Berkeley (research lecturer in mathematics; 1960-1962), Columbia University (postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor of mathematics; 1962-1964) and Princeton University (assistant professor of mathematics; 1964-1968). He has also held visiting positions in Amsterdam, Paris, Warwick, Barcelona, Basel, and Florence.
He founded the Visual Math Institute at Santa Cruz[1] in 1975; at that time, it was called the "Visual Mathematics Project". He is editor of World Futures and for the International Journal of Bifurcations and Chaos. Abraham is a member of cultural historian William Irwin Thompson's Lindisfarne Association.
Abraham has been involved in the development of dynamical systems theory since the 1960s and 1970s. He has been a consultant on chaos theory and its applications in numerous fields, such as medical physiology, ecology, mathematical economics, and psychotherapy.[2]
Another interest of Abraham's concerns alternative ways of expressing mathematics, for example visually or aurally. He has staged performances in which mathematics, visual arts and music are combined into one presentation.
Abraham developed an interest in "Hip" activities in Santa Cruz in the 1960s and has a website gathering information on the topic.[3] He credits his use of the psychedelic drug DMT for "swerv[ing his] career toward a search for the connections between mathematics and the experience of the Logos".[4]