Jay Robert Goldman
(1940-2022)
It is with sadness that we announce the passing of Jay Robert Goldman. He was born in Brooklyn, New York on August 2, 1940, and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on the morning of August 13, 2022 at the age of 82.
While his passing is marked with sadness, it is with great joy that his family and friends remember his full life. His interest in Mathematics and Physics started as a boy, and then grew through his undergraduate work at Brooklyn College, followed by a Ph.D. in Mathematics at Princeton University. He met his wife-to-be as an Assistant Professor at Harvard University in the 1966. In 1970, he moved with his new family to Minneapolis, Minnesota where he spent 35 years as a Professor of Mathematics at the University. In addition to his regular teaching and research in probability, combinatorics, and number theory, he was proud to help found the University of Minnesota Talented Youth in Mathematics Program (UMTYMP), in which he participated until his retirement in 2006.
In addition to his joy in his family and academic career, he was passionate about photography. He took more than 10,000 photographs, mostly of people, and was a member of Photographic Historical Society of New England for more than 30 years. He was also an avid book collector, amassing an eclectic collection of over 2,000 books ranging from science and photography, all the way to science fiction and general fiction. When travelling abroad, he would often return to the US with not only dozens of rolls of film, but also his own weight in books crammed into bags that had originally left the country empty.
Jay lit up the room he with his personality, whether he was telling a bad joke, the discussing the latest mathematical idea, or any one of the thousand stories that he seemed to always have on tap. He was always his best around others, as his family knew so very well. He is remembered by fellow mathematicians as a great colleague, always ready to collaborate or just discuss a broad range of topics.
Jay Goldman: professor, husband, father, grandfather, and friend—was laid to rest in Newton, Massachusetts on August 15, 2022. He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Anne Goldman, daughter Elizabeth, son Jonathan, and five loving grandchildren: Kristen, Gregory, Caitlyn, Whitney, and Alexandra.
The family suggests that donations in Jay’s memory can be made to:
