RIP Richard Haberman (1945–2018)

I just got the e-mail to the applied dynamical-systems mailing list with the sad news that Rich Haberman died on December 31st. I used his book in a class my sophomore year (and our best TA was his former student from SMU), and then I met him through the Snowbird conferences, partly because he was one of the few senior people who sometimes did poster presentations. Rich was later my host for my job interview at SMU. My tweet below includes the preface of the second edition of his book.

RIP Rich Haberman (1945 – 12/31/2018).

I knew Rich and interacted with him at the Snowbird meetings (and he later hosted me for my job interview at SMU), but I used his PDE book in one of my classes before then.

He was an "unapologetic champion of Applied Mathematics". pic.twitter.com/JmCXkWqsAt

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) January 11, 2019

I'd also like to quote the obituary (written by Alejandro Aceves, Roy Goodman, and Peter Miller) in the e-mail that was sent to SIAM's dynamical-systems mailing list:

We are very sad to have to report that Richard Haberman passed away on December 31, 2018. Richard (Rich) received his BS (1967) and PhD (1971) at MIT. During his time as a graduate student, he met Mark Ablowitz, both of whom had the same advisor David Benney. Rich and Mark established a strong friendship that lasted until Rich's passing. They also co-authored papers which mark the start of Rich's contributions to nonlinear waves. In line with the times they worked on ways to generate isospectral flows which are equivalent to systems of nonlinear partial differential equations, including extensions to two and three dimensions, where as we know there are fewer known integrable models. The role of linear and nonlinear resonances leading to 'universal' evolution equations is best seen in their 1975 Journal of Mathematical Physics paper 'Resonantly coupled nonlinear evolution equations'. It is perhaps this aspect that points to the ease in which Rich's work blends nonlinear waves and dynamical systems in a natural way. More recent work with one of us (Roy Goodman) focused on explaining the two-bounce resonance phenomenon and chaotic scattering in the interaction of solitary waves in near-integrable and nonintegrable systems, which again blends nonlinear waves and dynamical systems.

Rich spent the bulk of his career at Southern Methodist University (SMU). An unapologetic champion of Applied Mathematics, he helped shape the Department of Mathematics to put emphasis in this direction. Throughout his almost 40 years as SMU, he mentored many young faculty, undergraduates, and graduate students. One of us (Peter Miller) was lucky to have been a beneficiary of this mentorship of undergraduates at SMU in the 1980's, and feels especially indebted to Rich for his training in applied mathematics and nonlinear waves in particular and his suggestion and support to continue study in graduate school. At the 2007 ICIAM meeting, he recruited one of us (Alejandro Aceves) to join SMU.

Rich's passion to teach the discipline with an applied flavor is best reflected in his books, most notably his book Elementary Applied Partial Differential Equations which has a world-wide audience and has been translated in many languages. This book is famous for its no-nonsense approach to a difficult subject and its clarity of presentation. Rich served for many years as Editor in Chief for the SIAM book series Mathematical Modeling and Computation. His last unfinished project with one of us (Alejandro Aceves) was to write a textbook in nonlinear dynamics based on many iterations of notes he had produced through the years.

Rich is survived by his wife of 50 years Liz Haberman, his children Ken and Vicki, and his granddaughters Leila, Gwyneth and Chloe. He was dedicated to his family and the profession. He was a friend, scientist, mentor and educator who will be sorely missed. The SMU Department of Mathematics is planning the creation of a scholarship in his name and more information about it will be posted on the Department website.