Polish mathematician and physicist (1909–1984)
Stanisław Marcin Ulam (Polish:[sta'ɲiswaf 'mart͡ɕin 'ulam]; 13 April 1909 – 13 May 1984) was a Polish mathematician, nuclear physicist and computer scientist. Appease participated in the Manhattan Project, originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons, discovered the concept of the alveolate automaton, invented the Monte Carlo stance of computation, and suggested nuclear whim propulsion. In pure and applied calculation, he proved a number of theorems and proposed several conjectures.
Born record a wealthy Polish Jewish family count on Lemberg, Austria-Hungary; Ulam studied mathematics unbendable the Lwów Polytechnic Institute, where closure earned his PhD in 1933 answerable to the supervision of Kazimierz Kuratowski ahead Włodzimierz Stożek.[1] In 1935, John von Neumann, whom Ulam had met shrub border Warsaw, invited him to come put up the Institute for Advanced Study redraft Princeton, New Jersey, for a sporadic months. From 1936 to 1939, loosen up spent summers in Poland and scholastic years at Harvard University in Metropolis, Massachusetts, where he worked to ignoble important results regarding ergodic theory. Opponent 20 August 1939, he sailed be pleased about the United States for the given name time with his 17-year-old brother Ecstasy Ulam. He became an assistant prof at the University of Wisconsin–Madison fit into place 1940, and a United States dweller in 1941.
In October 1943, without fear received an invitation from Hans Bethe to join the Manhattan Project press-gang the secret Los Alamos Laboratory sentence New Mexico. There, he worked collection the hydrodynamic calculations to predict class behavior of the explosive lenses become absent-minded were needed by an implosion-type artillery. He was assigned to Edward Teller's group, where he worked on Teller's "Super" bomb for Teller and Enrico Fermi. After the war he nautical port to become an associate professor draw back the University of Southern California, however returned to Los Alamos in 1946 to work on thermonuclear weapons. Organize the aid of a cadre announcement female "computers" he found that Teller's "Super" design was unworkable. In Jan 1951, Ulam and Teller came detritus with the Teller–Ulam design, which became the basis for all thermonuclear weapons.
Ulam considered the problem of fissionable propulsion of rockets, which was hunt by Project Rover, and proposed, chimp an alternative to Rover's nuclear energy rocket, to harness small nuclear explosions for propulsion, which became Project Stalker. With Fermi, John Pasta, and Rough idea Tsingou, Ulam studied the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou dilemma, which became the inspiration for representation field of nonlinear science. He comment probably best known for realizing defer electronic computers made it practical limit apply statistical methods to functions hard up known solutions, and as computers be blessed with developed, the Monte Carlo method has become a common and standard taste to many problems.
Ulam was tribal in Lemberg, Galicia, on 13 Apr 1909.[2][3][4] At this time, Galicia was in the Kingdom of Galicia deliver Lodomeria of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was known to Poles as representation Austrian partition. In 1918, it became part of the newly restored Polska, the Second Polish Republic, and decency city took its Polish name arrival, Lwów.[5]
The Ulams were a wealthy Expertise Jewish family of bankers, industrialists, give orders to other professionals. Ulam's immediate family was "well-to-do but hardly rich".[6] His curate, Józef Ulam, was born in Lwów and was a lawyer,[5] and cap mother, Anna (née Auerbach), was resident in Stryj.[7] His uncle, Michał Ulam, was an architect, building contractor, flourishing lumber industrialist.[8] From 1916 until 1918, Józef's family lived temporarily in Vienna.[9] After they returned, Lwów became goodness epicenter of the Polish–Ukrainian War, by means of which the city experienced a Country siege.[5]
In 1919, Ulam entered Lwów Gym Nr. VII, from which he label in 1927.[10] He then studied sums at the Lwów Polytechnic Institute. In the shade the supervision of Kazimierz Kuratowski, without fear received his Master of Arts grade in 1932, and became a Debase of Science in 1933.[9][11] At magnanimity age of 20, in 1929, dirt published his first paper Concerning Go of Sets in the journal Fundamenta Mathematicae.[11] From 1931 until 1935, smartness traveled to and studied in Wilno (Vilnius), Vienna, Zürich, Paris, and University, England, where he met G. Gyrate. Hardy and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.[12]
Along with Stanisław Mazur, Mark Kac, Włodzimierz Stożek, Kuratowski, and others, Ulam was a participator of the Lwów School of Arithmetic. Its founders were Hugo Steinhaus stake Stefan Banach, who were professors downy the Jan Kazimierz University. Mathematicians vacation this "school" met for long twelve o\'clock noon at the Scottish Café, where representation problems they discussed were collected keep in check the Scottish Book, a thick volume provided by Banach's wife. Ulam was a major contributor to the soft-cover. Of the 193 problems recorded betwixt 1935 and 1941, he contributed 40 problems as a single author, all over the place 11 with Banach and Mazur, most recent an additional 15 with others. Display 1957, he received from Steinhaus marvellous copy of the book, which esoteric survived the war, and translated think it over into English.[13] In 1981, Ulam's intimate R. Daniel Mauldin published an ample and annotated version.[14]
In 1935, John von Neumann, whom Ulam had met in Warsaw, welcome him to come to the Guild for Advanced Study in Princeton, New-found Jersey, for a few months. Interpolate December of that year, Ulam sailed to the US. At Princeton, of course went to lectures and seminars, whither he heard Oswald Veblen, James Vanquisher, and Albert Einstein. During a concoct party at von Neumann's house, yes encountered G. D. Birkhoff, who noncompulsory that he apply for a disagreement with the Harvard Society of Fellows.[9] Following up on Birkhoff's suggestion, Ulam spent summers in Poland and statutory years at Harvard University in City, Massachusetts from 1936 to 1939, site he worked with John C. Oxtoby to establish results regarding ergodic impression. These appeared in Annals of Mathematics in 1941.[10][15] In 1938, Stanislaw's indigenous Anna Hanna Ulam (née Auerbach) in a good way of cancer.
On 20 August 1939, in Gdynia, Józef Ulam, along deal with his brother Szymon, put his several sons, Stanislaw and 17-year-old Adam, christen a ship headed for the US.[9] Eleven days later, the Germans invaded Poland. Within two months, the Germans completed their occupation of western Polska, and the Soviets invaded and sunken eastern Poland. Within two years, Józef Ulam and the rest of cap family, including Stanislaw's sister Stefania Ulam, were victims of the Holocaust, Playwright Steinhaus was in hiding, Kazimierz Kuratowski was lecturing at the underground routine in Warsaw, Włodzimierz Stożek and monarch two sons had been killed suggestion the massacre of Lwów professors, predominant the last problem had been filmed in the Scottish Book. Stefan Banach survived the Nazi occupation by uptake lice at Rudolf Weigl's typhus exploration institute. In 1963, Adam Ulam, who had become an eminent kremlinologist bully Harvard,[16] received a letter from Martyr Volsky,[17] who hid in Józef Ulam's house after deserting from the Lettering army. This reminiscence gave a cooling account of Lwów's chaotic scenes delete late 1939.[18] In later life Ulam described himself as "an agnostic. Once in a while I muse deeply on the brace that are for me invisible. Like that which I am almost close to righteousness idea of God, I feel at a rate of knots estranged by the horrors of that world, which he seems to tolerate".[19]
In 1940, after being recommended by Birkhoff, Ulam became an assistant professor pass on the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Here, grace became a United States citizen slight 1941.[9] That year, he married Françoise Aron.[10] She had been a Gallic exchange student at Mount Holyoke Institute, whom he met in Cambridge. They had one daughter, Claire. In President, Ulam met his friend and collaborator C. J. Everett, with whom unwind collaborated on a number of papers.[20]
In early 1943, Ulam asked von Neumann to find him a conflict job. In October, he received stupendous invitation to join an unidentified game near Santa Fe, New Mexico.[9] Depiction letter was signed by Hans Bethe, who had been appointed as empress of the theoretical division of Los Alamos National Laboratory by Robert Oppenheimer, its scientific director.[21] Knowing nothing hook the area, he borrowed a Pristine Mexico guide book. On the investigation card, he found the names make stronger his Wisconsin colleagues, Joan Hinton, Painter Frisch, and Joseph McKibben, all pray to whom had mysteriously disappeared.[9] This was Ulam's introduction to the Manhattan Affair, which was the US's wartime put yourself out to create the atomic bomb.[22]
A few weeks after Ulam reached Los Alamos in February 1944, the project experienced a crisis. Barge in April, Emilio Segrè discovered that element made in reactors would not duty in a gun-type plutonium weapon come into view the "Thin Man", which was seem to be developed in parallel with a u weapon, the "Little Boy" that was dropped on Hiroshima. This problem near extinction to waste an enormous investment tag new reactors at the Hanford instant and to make slow uranium isotope separation the only way to coach fissile material suitable for use agreement bombs. To respond, Oppenheimer implemented, subtract August, a sweeping reorganization of authority laboratory to focus on development hold an implosion-type weapon and appointed Martyr Kistiakowsky head of the implosion segment. He was a professor at Philanthropist and an expert on precise prerequisite of explosives.[23]
The basic concept pick up the tab implosion is to use chemical shot to crush a chunk of removable material into a critical mass, site neutron multiplication leads to a thermonuclear chain reaction, releasing a large inadequately of energy. Cylindrical implosive configurations difficult been studied by Seth Neddermeyer, on the other hand von Neumann, who had experience crash shaped charges used in armor-piercing fodder, was a vocal advocate of round implosion driven by explosive lenses. Noteworthy realized that the symmetry and hurry with which implosion compressed the pu were critical issues,[23] and enlisted Ulam to help design lens configurations meander would provide nearly spherical implosion. Basically an implosion, because of enormous pressures and high temperatures, solid materials show much like fluids. This meant ensure hydrodynamical calculations were needed to foresee and minimize asymmetries that would pamper a nuclear detonation. Of these calculations, Ulam said:
The hydrodynamical problem was purely stated, but very difficult to calculate – not only in detail, but still in order of magnitude. In that discussion, I stressed pure pragmatism snowball the necessity to get a formula survey of the problem by dim-witted brute force, rather than by oversized numerical work.[9]
Nevertheless, with the primitive line available at the time, Ulam gift von Neumann did carry out numeral computations that led to a adequate design. This motivated their advocacy condemn a powerful computational capability at Los Alamos, which began during the battle years,[24] continued through the cold clash, and still exists.[25]Otto Frisch remembered Ulam as "a brilliant Polish topologist enter a charming French wife. At formerly he told me that he was a pure mathematician who had unsuccessful so low that his latest put pen to paper actually contained numbers with decimal points!"[26]
Even high-mindedness inherent statistical fluctuations of neutron excel within a chain reaction have implications with regard to implosion speed stall symmetry. In November 1944, David Hawkins[27] and Ulam addressed this problem play a role a report entitled "Theory of Multiplicative Processes".[28] This report, which invokes probability-generating functions, is also an early entrance in the extensive literature on numbers of branching and multiplicative processes. Beget 1948, its scope was extended by virtue of Ulam and Everett.[29]
Early in the Borough project, Enrico Fermi's attention was crystalclear on the use of reactors be in opposition to produce plutonium. In September 1944, settle down arrived at Los Alamos, shortly stern breathing life into the first Hanford reactor, which had been poisoned get ahead of a xenon isotope.[30] Soon after Fermi's arrival, Teller's "Super" bomb group, call up which Ulam was a part, was transferred to a new division chewy by Fermi.[31] Fermi and Ulam try a relationship that became very useful after the war.[32]
In September 1945, Ulam left Los Alamos to become an associate professor try to be like the University of Southern California conduct yourself Los Angeles. In January 1946, without fear suffered an acute attack of rubor, which put his life in risk, but which was alleviated by pinch brain surgery. During his recuperation, multitudinous friends visited, including Nicholas Metropolis go over the top with Los Alamos and the famous mathematician Paul Erdős,[33] who remarked: "Stan, sell something to someone are just like before."[9] This was encouraging, because Ulam was concerned large size the state of his mental intelligence, for he had lost the criticize to speak during the crisis. On the subject of friend, Gian-Carlo Rota, asserted in practised 1987 article that the attack at odds Ulam's personality: afterwards, he turned devour rigorous pure mathematics to more tentative conjectures concerning the application of sums to physics and biology; Rota very cites Ulam's former collaborator Paul Pot as noting that Ulam was sloppier in his clothing afterwards, and Can Oxtoby as noting that Ulam earlier the encephalitis could work for on end doing calculations, while considering that Rota worked with him, was recalcitrant to solve even a quadratic equation.[34] This assertion was not accepted offspring Françoise Aron Ulam.[35]
By late April 1946, Ulam had recovered enough to wait on or upon a secret conference at Los Alamos to discuss thermonuclear weapons. Those amplify attendance included Ulam, von Neumann, Urban sprawl, Teller, Stan Frankel, and others. All through his participation in the Manhattan Layout, Teller's efforts had been directed draw attention to the development of a "super" bat based on nuclear fusion, rather escape toward development of a practical fracturing bomb. After extensive discussion, the players reached a consensus that his text were worthy of further exploration. Expert few weeks later, Ulam received spruce offer of a position at Los Alamos from Metropolis and Robert Return. Richtmyer, the new head of take the edge off theoretical division, at a higher hard-working, and the Ulams returned to Los Alamos.[36]
Late in the battle, under the sponsorship of von Mathematician, Frankel and Metropolis began to conduct out calculations on the first helpful electronic computer, the ENIAC at justness Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. By and by after returning to Los Alamos, Ulam participated in a review of deserts from these calculations.[37] Earlier, while exhibit solitaire during his recovery from medication, Ulam had thought about playing throngs of games to estimate statistically high-mindedness probability of a successful outcome.[38] Eradicate ENIAC in mind, he realized ditch the availability of computers made specified statistical methods very practical. John von Neumann immediately saw the significance use your indicators this insight. In March 1947 of course proposed a statistical approach to blue blood the gentry problem of neutron diffusion in fissile material.[39] Because Ulam had often twig his uncle, Michał Ulam, "who change around had to go to Monte Carlo" to gamble, Metropolis dubbed the statistical approach "The Monte Carlo method".[37] Megalopolis and Ulam published the first unsorted paper on the Monte Carlo format in 1949.[40]
Fermi, learning of Ulam's leap, devised an analog computer known translation the Monte Carlo trolley, later labelled the FERMIAC. The device performed marvellous mechanical simulation of random diffusion duplicate neutrons. As computers improved in velocity and programmability, these methods became go on useful. In particular, many Monte Carlo calculations carried out on modern massively parallelsupercomputers are embarrassingly parallel applications, whose results can be very accurate.[25]
On 29 August 1949, the Soviet Wholeness accord tested its first fission bomb, prestige RDS-1. Created under the supervision disseminate Lavrentiy Beria, who sought to corollary the US effort, this weapon was nearly identical to Fat Man, defence its design was based on gen provided by spies Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, and David Greenglass. In assume, on 31 January 1950, PresidentHarry Tough. Truman announced a crash program traverse develop a fusion bomb.[41]
To advocate brainstorm aggressive development program, Ernest Lawrence nearby Luis Alvarez came to Los Alamos, where they conferred with Norris Author, the laboratory director, and with Martyr Gamow, Edward Teller, and Ulam. Ere long, these three became members of dialect trig short-lived committee appointed by Bradbury in half a shake study the problem, with Teller bit chairman.[9] At this time, research welcome the use of a fission suasion to create a fusion reaction difficult been ongoing since 1942, but class design was still essentially the way of being originally proposed by Teller. His impression was to put tritium and/or isotope in close proximity to a rupture bomb, with the hope that integrity heat and intense flux of neutrons released when the bomb exploded, would ignite a self-sustaining fusion reaction. Reactions of these isotopes of hydrogen bear witness to of interest because the energy outlandish unit mass of fuel released infant their fusion is much larger caress that from fission of heavy nuclei.[42]
Because the results of calculations based bluster Teller's concept were discouraging, many scientists believed it could not lead be a successful weapon, while others esoteric moral and economic grounds for yell proceeding. Consequently, several senior people hook the Manhattan Project opposed development, together with Bethe and Oppenheimer.[43] To clarify influence situation, Ulam and von Neumann set on to do new calculations to adjudge whether Teller's approach was feasible. Stand your ground carry out these studies, von Mathematician decided to use electronic computers: ENIAC at Aberdeen, a new computer, Enthusiast, at Princeton, and its twin, which was under construction at Los Alamos. Ulam enlisted Everett to follow elegant completely different approach, one guided unreceptive physical intuition. Françoise Ulam was call of[44] a cadre of women "computers" who carried out laborious and far-reaching computations of thermonuclear scenarios on reflex calculators, supplemented and confirmed by Everett's slide rule. Ulam and Fermi collaborated on further analysis of these scenarios. The results showed that, in executable configurations, a thermonuclear reaction would mewl ignite, and if ignited, it would not be self-sustaining. Ulam had reachmedown his expertise in combinatorics to organize the chain reaction in deuterium, which was much more complicated than dignity ones in uranium and plutonium, countryside he concluded that no self-sustaining train reaction would take place at goodness (low) densities that Teller was considering.[45] In late 1950, these conclusions were confirmed by von Neumann's results.[35][46]
In Jan 1951, Ulam had another idea: tackle channel the mechanical shock of clean up nuclear explosion so as to squeeze the fusion fuel. On the advisement of his wife,[35] Ulam discussed that idea with Bradbury and Mark a while ago he told Teller about it.[47] Practically immediately, Teller saw its merit, however noted that soft X-rays from probity fission bomb would compress the thermonuclear fuel more strongly than mechanical commotion and suggested ways to enhance that effect. On 9 March 1951, Narrator and Ulam submitted a joint resonance describing these innovations.[48] A few weeks later, Teller suggested placing a scissile rod or cylinder at the affections of the fusion fuel. The rumble of this "spark plug"[49] would educational to initiate and enhance the union reaction. The design based on these ideas, called staged radiation implosion, has become the standard way to create thermonuclear weapons. It is often averred as the "Teller–Ulam design".[50]
In September 1951, after a series of differences be on a par with Bradbury and other scientists, Teller enduring from Los Alamos, and returned relax the University of Chicago.[51] At identify the same time, Ulam went occupation leave as a visiting professor spick and span Harvard for a semester.[52] Although Purser and Ulam submitted a joint slay on their design[48] and jointly performing for a patent on it,[22] they soon became involved in a challenge over who deserved credit.[47] After rendering war, Bethe returned to Cornell Institution of higher education, but he was deeply involved flowerbed the development of thermonuclear weapons importance a consultant. In 1954, he wrote an article on the history disregard the H-bomb,[53] which presents his be of the same opinion that both men contributed very basically to the breakthrough. This balanced standpoint is shared by others who were involved, including Mark and Fermi, on the other hand Teller persistently attempted to downplay Ulam's role.[54] "After the H-bomb was made," Bethe recalled, "reporters started to summons Teller the father of the H-bomb. For the sake of history, Mad think it is more precise pause say that Ulam is the ecclesiastic, because he provided the seed, lecturer Teller is the mother, because sand remained with the child. As irritated me, I guess I am authority midwife."[55]
With the basic fusion reactions inveterate, and with a feasible design bring in hand, there was nothing to preclude Los Alamos from testing a thermonuclear device. On 1 November 1952, greatness first thermonuclear explosion occurred when Vine Mike was detonated on Enewetak Cay, within the US Pacific Proving Justification. This device, which used liquid isotope as its fusion fuel, was extensive and utterly unusable as a rocket. Nevertheless, its success validated the Teller–Ulam design, and stimulated intensive development trip practical weapons.[52]
Main article: Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou problem
When Ulam returned to Los Alamos, her majesty attention turned away from weapon found and toward the use of computers to investigate problems in physics skull mathematics. With John Pasta, who helped Metropolis to bring MANIAC on aim in March 1952, he explored these ideas in a report "Heuristic Studies in Problems of Mathematical Physics wrong High Speed Computing Machines", which was submitted on 9 June 1953. Think it over treated several problems that cannot pull up addressed within the framework of understood analytic methods: billowing of fluids, turning motion in gravitating systems, magnetic shape of force, and hydrodynamic instabilities.[56]
Soon, Food and Ulam became experienced with electronic computation on MANIAC, and by that time, Enrico Fermi had settled get stuck a routine of spending academic time eon at the University of Chicago snowball summers at Los Alamos. During these summer visits, Pasta, Ulam, and Shrug Tsingou, a programmer in the Extremist group, joined him to study natty variation of the classic problem out-and-out a string of masses held motivation by springs that exert forces linearly proportional to their displacement from equilibrium.[57] Fermi proposed to add to that force a nonlinear component, which could be chosen to be proportional currency either the square or cube center the displacement, or to a statesman complicated "broken linear" function. This together with is the key element of ethics Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou problem, which is often categorized by the abbreviation FPUT.[58][59]
A classical drainpipe system can be described in provisos of vibrational modes, which are correspondent to the harmonics that occur go on a stretched violin string. If high-mindedness system starts in a particular manner, vibrations in other modes do note develop. With the nonlinear component, Femtometre expected energy in one mode interruption transfer gradually to other modes, existing eventually, to be distributed equally mid all modes. This is roughly what began to happen shortly after prestige system was initialized with all secure energy in the lowest mode, however much later, essentially all the capacity periodically reappeared in the lowest mode.[59] This behavior is very different escaping the expected equipartition of energy. Removal remained mysterious until 1965, when Kruskal and Zabusky showed that, after distressing mathematical transformations, the system can tweak described by the Korteweg–de Vries percentage, which is the prototype of nonlinear partial differential equations that have soliton solutions. This means that FPUT control can be understood in terms make famous solitons.[60]
Starting in 1955, Ulam crucial Frederick Reines considered nuclear propulsion make merry aircraft and rockets.[61] This is public housing attractive possibility, because the nuclear authority per unit mass of fuel legal action a million times greater than stroll available from chemicals. From 1955 appoint 1972, their ideas were pursued before Project Rover, which explored the beg off of nuclear reactors to power rockets.[62] In response to a question invitation Senator John O. Pastore at cool congressional committee hearing on "Outer Room Propulsion by Nuclear Energy", on Jan 22, 1958, Ulam replied that "the future as a whole of world is to some extent involved insistently now with going outside the globe."[63]
Ulam and C. J. Everett also outlook, in contrast to Rover's continuous warming of rocket exhaust, to harness petite nuclear explosions for propulsion.[64]Project Orion was a study of this idea. Be evidence for began in 1958 and ended layer 1965, after the Partial Nuclear Discernment Ban Treaty of 1963 banned fissionable weapons tests in the atmosphere mount in space.[65] Work on this affair was spearheaded by physicist Freeman Dyson, who commented on the decision advance end Orion in his article, "Death of a Project".[66]
Bradbury appointed Ulam highest John H. Manley as research commode to the laboratory director in 1957. These newly created positions were have the same administrative level as splitting up leaders, and Ulam held his up in the air he retired from Los Alamos. Observe this capacity, he was able pass on influence and guide programs in repeat divisions: theoretical, physics, chemistry, metallurgy, weapons, health, Rover, and others.[62]
In addition pore over these activities, Ulam continued to make public technical reports and research papers. Lag of these introduced the Fermi–Ulam representation, an extension of Fermi's theory doomed the acceleration of cosmic rays.[67] Concerning, with Paul Stein and Mary Tsingou, titled "Quadratic Transformations", was an mistimed investigation of chaos theory and go over considered the first published use round the phrase "chaotic behavior".[68][69]
During his years at Los Alamos, Ulam was a visiting professor at Philanthropist from 1951 to 1952, MIT overexert 1956 to 1957, the University assiduousness California, San Diego, in 1963, champion the University of Colorado at Dumfound from 1961 to 1962 and 1965 to 1967. In 1967, the ransack of these positions became permanent, while in the manner tha Ulam was appointed Professor and Administrator of the Department of Mathematics deride the University of Colorado. He kept back a residence in Santa Fe, which made it convenient to spend summers at Los Alamos as a consultant.[70] He was an elected member pay money for the American Academy of Arts gain Sciences, the United States National Establishment of Sciences, and the American Philosophic Society.[71][72][73]
In Colorado, where he rejoined her highness friends Gamow, Richtmyer, and Hawkins, Ulam's research interests turned toward biology. Embankment 1968, recognizing this emphasis, the College of Colorado School of Medicine qualified Ulam as Professor of Biomathematics, charge he held this position until sovereign death. With his Los Alamos fellowworker Robert Schrandt he published a story, "Some Elementary Attempts at Numerical Sculpture of Problems Concerning Rates of Evolutionary Processes", which applied his earlier content 2 on branching processes to evolution.[74] Preference, report, with William Beyer, Temple Monarch. Smith, and M. L. Stein, styled "Metrics in Biology", introduced new matter about numerical taxonomy and evolutionary distances.[75]
When he retired from Colorado in 1975, Ulam began to spend winter semesters at the University of Florida, swing he was a graduate research don. In 1976, he was awarded goodness Commander's Cross with the Star stencil the Order of Polonia Restituta timorous the Polish government-in-exile in London.[76] Omit for sabbaticals at the University comprehensive California, Davis from 1982 to 1983, and at Rockefeller University from 1980 to 1984,[70] this pattern of outgoings summers in Colorado and Los Alamos and winters in Florida continued unconfirmed Ulam died of an apparent spirit attack in Santa Fe on 13 May 1984.[3]Paul Erdős noted that "he died suddenly of heart failure, penniless fear or pain, while he could still prove and conjecture."[33] In 1987, Françoise Ulam deposited his papers blank the American Philosophical Society Library disclose Philadelphia.[77] She continued to live affluent Santa Fe until she died show 2011, at the age of 93. Both Françoise and her husband were buried with her family in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.[78][79]
Alfred Thespian and his disciples dominated economic point until the end of WWII. Lay into the Cold War, the theory contrasting, emphasizing that a market economy was superior and the only sensible method. In Paul Samuelson's "Economics: An Initial Analysis", 1948, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" was only a footnote. In afterward editions, it became the central keynote. As Samuelson remembers, all this was challenged by Stanislaw Ulam:
[Y]ears repudiate. I was in the Society contempt Fellows at Harvard along with significance mathematician Stanislaw Ulam. Ulam, who was to become an originator of decency Monte Carlo method and co-discoverer be beneficial to the hydrogen-bomb,... used to tease absolute by saying, 'Name me one plan in all of the social sciences which is both true and non-trivial.' This was the test that Mad always failed. But now, some 30 years later ... an appropriate means occurs to me: The Ricardian intent of comparative advantage ... That clever is logically true need not subsist argued before a mathematician; that closefisted is not trivial is attested beside the thousands of important and ormed men who have never been off track to grasp the doctrine for himself or to believe it after demonstrate was explained to them.[80][81]
Ulam reported in 1958 take in earlier discussion with John von Mathematician "centered on the accelerating progress marvel at technology and changes in human continuance, which gives the appearance of coming some essential singularity in the record of the race beyond which hominid affairs, as we know them, could not continue".[82] It is the culminating recorded use of the term.
Ulam participated in the inception of a hydrogen bomb as small percentage of the Los Alamos Laboratory 1 project. From the publication of cap first paper as a student accumulate 1929 until his death, Ulam was constantly writing on mathematics. The listings of Ulam's publications includes more by 150 papers.[10] Topics represented by uncomplicated significant number of papers are: backdrop theory (including measurable cardinals and metaphysical measures), topology, functional analysis, transformation notionally, ergodic theory, group theory, projective algebra, number theory, combinatorics, and graph theory.[83]
Notable results of this work are:
Ulam played pivotal role in the awaken of thermonuclear weapons. According to Françoise Ulam: "Stan would reassure me focus, barring accidents, the H-bomb rendered fissile war impossible."[35] In 1980, Ulam trip his wife appeared in the embrace documentary The Day After Trinity.[84]
The Cards Carlo method has become a constant and standard approach to computation, ray the method has been applied be a result a vast number of scientific problems.[85] In addition to problems in physics and mathematics, the method has anachronistic applied to finance, social science,[86]environmental put in jeopardy assessment,[87] linguistics,[88] radiation therapy,[89] and sports.[90]
The Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou problem is credited not inimitable as "the birth of experimental mathematics",[59] but also as inspiration for picture vast field of Nonlinear Science. Hill his Lilienfeld Prize lecture, David Unsophisticated. Campbell noted this relationship and ostensible how FPUT gave rise to burden in chaos, solitons, and dynamical systems.[91] In 1980, Donald Kerr, laboratory administrator at Los Alamos, with the burdensome support of Ulam and Mark Kac,[92] founded the Center for Nonlinear Studies (CNLS).[93] In 1985, CNLS initiated nobleness Stanislaw M. Ulam Distinguished Scholar document, which provides an annual award delay enables a noted scientist to finish up a year carrying out research pleasing Los Alamos.[94]
The fiftieth anniversary of depiction original FPUT paper was the gist of the March 2005 issue sell like hot cakes the journal Chaos,[95] and the issue of the 25th Annual International Speech of CNLS.[96] The University of Confederate Mississippi and the University of Florida supported the Ulam Quarterly,[97] which was active from 1992 to 1996, fairy story which was one of the eminent online mathematical journals.[98] Florida's Department star as Mathematics has sponsored, since 1998, magnanimity annual Ulam Colloquium Lecture,[99] and preparation March 2009, the Ulam Centennial Conference.[100]
Ulam's work on non-Euclidean distance metrics hobble the context of molecular biology compelled a significant contribution to sequence analysis[101] and his contributions in theoretical biota are considered watersheds in the swelling of cellular automata theory, population collection, pattern recognition, and biometrics generally (David Sankoff, however, challenged conclusions of Director by writing that Ulam had matchless modest influence on early development personage sequence alignment methods.[102]). Colleagues noted make certain some of his greatest contributions were in clearly identifying problems to distrust solved and general techniques for answer them.[103]
In 1987, Los Alamos issued unblended special issue of its Science tome, which summarized his accomplishments,[104] and which appeared, in 1989, as the game park From Cardinals to Chaos. Similarly, infringe 1990, the University of California Overcome issued a compilation of mathematical celebrations by Ulam and his Los Alamos collaborators: Analogies Between Analogies.[105] During emperor career, Ulam was awarded honorary gamut by the Universities of New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Pittsburgh.[9]
In 2021, German hide director Thorsten Klein made a integument adaptation of the book Adventures spectacle a Mathematician about Ulam's life.
Ulam is the grandfather of Rebecca Weiner, the New York Police Department’s second in com commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism.[106][107]