Tobias Dantzig

Who was Tobias Dantzig?

Tobias Dantzig was a Baltic German Russian American mathematician, the father of George Dantzig, and the author of Number: The Language of Science and Aspects of Science.

Born in present-day Latvia, Dantzig studied mathematics with Henri Poincaré in Paris. Tobias married a fellow Sorbonne University student, Anja Ourisson, and the couple emigrated to the United States in 1910. He worked for a time as a lumberjack, road worker, and house painter in Oregon, until returning to academia at the encouragement of Reed College mathematician Frank Griffin. Dantzig received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Indiana University in 1917, while working as a professor there. He later taught at Johns Hopkins, Columbia University, and the University of Maryland.

Dantzig died in Los Angeles in 1956. He was the father of George Dantzig, a key figure in the development of linear programming.