Seventy-five years on, Peter Lax ranks among the most distinguished mathematicians of modern times. A pre-eminent figure in both pure and applied mathematics, he has earned the highest honors in his field, including the Abel Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel. For most his career, Lax was a professor at NYU’s famed Courant Institute, established by his mentor and longtime colleague Richard Courant. (Following his wife Anneli’s death, Lax married Courant’s daughter, Lori Courant Berkowitz; she died in 2015.) Lax’s other prime mentor was von Neumann, a leading figure in the Manhattan Project who is considered the founding father of game theory and the computer age. Lax has called him “the most scintillating intellect of the 20th century.” He considers it a mystery that von Neumann is not a household name on a par with Einstein.


One of the Last Living Manhattan Project Scientists Looks Back at the Atomic Bomb Tests
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