From 1980-86, Dr. Lax served on the National Science Board, which sets American research funding policies. In 1982, his “Report of the Panel on Large Scale Computing in Science and Engineering,” commonly known as the Lax Report, set a lasting agenda for academic- and military-networked research with government supercomputers.
His personal life was as integrated with the Courant Institute as his professional life. His first marriage, in 1948, was to the mathematician Anneli Cahn, a fellow doctoral student. After her death in 1999, he married Dr. Courant’s daughter, Lori Berkowitz, the widow of another Courant Institute mathematician and principal violist for the American Symphony Orchestra. She died in 2015.
Besides his son James, Dr. Lax is survived by his stepchildren, David and Susan Berkowitz; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Another son, John Lax, was killed by a drunk driver in 1978.
Dr. Lax also wrote poetry, in English and Hungarian. In a 1999 report to the American Philosophical Society, he summarized one of his findings about differential equations with a haiku:
Speed depends on size
Balanced by dispersion
Oh, solitary splendor.
Dr. Lax represented the pragmatic side of mathematicians’ engagement with the Cold War. He kept his politics close to his chest, but often privately supported mathematicians involved in antiwar activism. At the same time, he retained the good relations with their ideological opposites that were necessary to keep money flowing to the mathematical research he valued. Though he believed that the atomic weapons he helped develop shortened World War II and deterred later conflicts, he emphasized the intellectual rewards of his military research.
His work bridged worlds — military and civilian, pure and applied mathematics, abstract theory and computation — reflecting a belief that the underlying math was universal. In a 2005 interview with The New York Times, he cited the fact that geometry and algebra, “which were so very different 100 years ago, are intricately connected today.”
“Mathematics is a very broad subject,” he said. “It is true that nobody can know it all, or even nearly all. But it is also true that as mathematics develops, things are simplified and unusual connections appear.”
Ash Wu contributed reporting.
