Oscar Goldman

Who is Oscar Goldman?

Oscar Goldman was an American mathematician, who worked on algebra and its applications to number theory.

Oscar Goldman received his PhD in 1948 under Claude Chevalley at Princeton University. He was chair of the Brandeis mathematics department from 1952 to 1960. As chair of the department his immediate successor was Maurice Auslander. In 1962, Goldman left Brandeis to become a professor and chair of the mathematics department at the University of Pennsylvania. Murray Gerstenhaber and Chung Tao Yang had persuaded Provost David R. Goddard to hire Goldman to help improve the quality of the U. of Pennsylvania's mathematics department to the level of the mathematics departments of Chicago, Harvard, and Princeton. From 1963 to 1967, Goldman served as the chair of the mathematics department of the U. of Pennsylvania, hired several outstanding mathematicians including Richard Kadison and Eugenio Calabi, and regularly consulted Saunders Mac Lane and Donald C. Spencer in making his decisions on hiring and curriculum improvements.