The Rutgers Computer Science Department shares the sad news of the passing of Distinguished Professor Robert (Bob) Vichnevetsky, a valued member of our academic community.
Bob Vichnevetsky, longtime president of the International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (IMACS), served as a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science from 1971 until his retirement in 2003 as a Distinguished Professor. He was the founding editor for three academic journals: Applied Numerical Mathematics, Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, and Journal of Computational Acoustics (now known as Journal of Theoretical and Computational Acoustics).
Born in Brussels, he received his Doctorate in Mathematics in 1961 from the Brussels Free University. He began his career in industry with Electronic Associates Incorporated (EAI), at the time the leading company in the manufacture of analog computers, moving to the USA to become Director of Research for EAI in Princeton. Bob's main research interests involved the numerical solution of partial differential equations, with applications to science and engineering. In addition to numerous articles, he was the author (with JB Bowles) of a book on Fourier Analysis of Numerical Approximations of Hyperbolic Equations, published by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He was also an organizer/editor of many symposia on numerical methods for partial differential equations.
Bob played a pivotal role in the development of scientific computing/numerical analysis within the Computer Science Department, starting from its earliest days and continuing till his retirement in 2003.