Donald John Lewis

Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the University of Michigan, passed away on February 25, 2015 at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital. Born January 25, 1926 in Minnesota, to William and Eleanor Lewis, he was the oldest of 8 children. He married Carolyn Dana Hauf in 1953 in Ann Arbor. The Lewises have lived in the same house in Ann Arbor since 1972.

Professor Lewis received his B.S. from the College of St. Thomas in 1946, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, respectively in 1949 and 1950. After receiving his doctorate, he was an instructor at Ohio State University for two years, and spent the following year as an NSF Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. In 1953 he joined the faculty of Notre Dame University, first as Assistant Professor, and from 1957 as Associate Professor. Professor Lewis joined the University of Michigan faculty as an Associate Professor in 1961, and was promoted to Full Professor in 1963. He was a visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study, and held visiting positions at various overseas institutions throughout his career, including the universities at Manchester, Cambridge, Oxford in England, Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and he held a Visiting Professorship sponsored by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science.

Professor Lewis served as Chair of the Department of Mathematics at UM during the period of 1984 to 1994, with a break for one year to visit the Institute for Advanced Study. He has received numerous awards for his research and service, including a Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award from UM and an Alexander Von Humboldt Preis. Even after retirement from UM, Lewis was active in research and continued to work in the department on alumni relations and fundraising. Lewis retired from active faculty status in 2000.

Between 1995 and 1999, Professor Lewis was based in Washington, D.C. as the Director of the Division of Mathematical Sciences of the National Science Foundation. While at NSF, he championed multidisciplinary initiatives that paved the way for the applied and interdisciplinary mathematics programs that are thriving at universities around the country. Lewis also developed and promoted vertical integration of mathematical research at the university level. These NSF funded programs led to mathematical research being accessible and integrated from the undergraduate level through graduate students, postdoc and senior faculty, working together on common research. He was awarded the Distinguished Public Service Award of the American Mathematical Society in 1995 in recognition his many contributions to mathematics research and education.

Professor Lewis' research lies in an area of Number Theory concerned primarily with Diophantine problems, and encompasses the theory of algebraic number fields and function fields, and arithmetic geometry. While a number of his results have been improved in recent times, it is characteristic especially of his earlier work that he was the first to obtain any kind of result on a problem, and that this decisive progress cleared the way for subsequent developments. The work in his thesis concerning the local solubility of cubic forms, however, remains definitive. Also noteworthy is a series of papers produced in a longstanding collaboration with Harold Davenport which laid the foundations for the investigation of a number of Diophantine problems, especially diagonal variants. In 1966, Lewis authored the book “Introduction to Algebra” that utilized the art of M.C. Escher to help display mathematical concepts and illustrate the interplay between the two disciplines. He published two volumes of the book “Calculus and Linear Algebra” with UM colleague Wilfred Kaplan, which have recently reprinted and used in courses at UM. The texts were written specifically for the UM honors calculus sequence (185 to 286), courses for which Lewis was a strong advocate. He is the author of 58 research papers and a number of survey papers. The latter, in particular, have provided valuable stimulation to a generation of workers in this field. One of Professor Lewis's main interests was the development of young mathematicians and he directed 24 doctoral theses. He was active as an associate editor of several scholarly mathematics journals.

In retirement, Professor Lewis remained active in the mathematical community, and within the UM Mathematics Department; he came to his office several times a week. Lewis regularly attended the Monday number theory seminar, Tuesday colloquium (including the week before his passing), and rarely missed a special event or lecture. For several years after retirement, he traveled regularly to Virginia and California to advise at the Institutes for Defense Analysis. He also continued to serve on the Department’s Development and Fundraising committee, providing keen historical insight into alumni matters and guiding fundraising efforts.

Professor Lewis is a noted cultivator of rhododendrons, the annual public display unfailingly providing a spectacular sight every spring. At one time he had 900 rhododendrons on ¾ of an acre, ranging from a few inches high to 12 feet. The Lewis garden was regularly used as a test site for new plant varieties to see if they were suitable for this climate. He was an advocate of UM sports teams, in particular women’s basketball. He enjoyed UM Musical Society events with his wife and friends. Besides his wife of 61 years, Carolyn Dana Lewis, he is survived by sister Pat Henning (Sonny), Adrian, MN, sister-in-law Arlene Lewis, DeLand, FL, brothers Paul (Mimi) Cherry Hill, NJ, Joe, Milwaukee, WI and Naples, FL, Bill (Judy), Faribault, MN and, Ed, El Segundo, CA, many nieces and nephews, and his beloved cat Victoria. Brothers Ray and Carl preceded him in death.

Visitation will be Monday, March 9, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., with sharing of remembrances immediately following, at Muehlig Funeral Chapel, 403 S. Fourth Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48104. A funeral mass will be held Tuesday, March 10, 10:30 a.m., at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, 2250 E. Stadium Blvd., Ann Arbor, MI 48104. The Mathematics Department will host a memorial at a later date. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Donald J. Lewis Professorship in Mathematics (571193), University of Michigan Department of Mathematics, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043. Online giving is available on the UM Leaders and Best giving site at this address http://victo.rs/1DUzpbX.