Raymond Moos Redheffer (April 17, 1921 – May 13, 2005) was an American mathematician. He was the creator of one of the first electronic games, Nim, a knowledge game.

Early life

He earned his PhD in 1948 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under Norman Levinson.

Career

He taught as a Peirce Fellow at Harvard from 1948 to 1950. His teaching skills were acknowledged 6 decades later by one of his students. He taught for 55 years at the University of California, Los Angeles, writing more than 200 research papers and three textbooks. Notable and unusual is the physically motivated discussion of the functions of vector calculus in his book with Sokolnikoff. He is known for the Redheffer matrix, the Redheffer star product, and for (with Charles Eames) his 1966 timeline of mathematics entitled Men of Modern Mathematics that was printed and distributed by IBM. He collaborated with Eames on a series of short films about mathematics, and may have invented a version of Nim with electronic components.

Recognition

Books