Martin H. Schultz

Arthur K. Watson Professor of Computer Science

Martin Schultz, B.S., California Institute of Technology, A.M., Ph.D., Harvard University, faculty member at Yale since 1970, you are a master at reinventing yourself, never bound by what you have done before. Trained as a mathematician, you were in the Mathematics Department at the Case Institute of Technology, the Mathematics and Computer Science Departments at Carnegie Mellon University, and the Mathematics Department at the California Institute of Technology before coming to the Computer Science Department at Yale in the second year of its existence.

Your thesis was on difference methods for solving hyperbolic differential equations. At Case you became a leader in the use of finite element methods for solving elliptic differential equations, writing one of the first books on spline theory. At Yale, when you realized that these methods led to large sparse linear systems, you became a leader in direct methods for solving them. When the problems grew too large for direct methods, you became a leader in iterative methods. And when single processors were not fast enough, you became a leader in the use of parallel processors for high-performance scientific computing. Most recently, your focus has switched once again—this time to data analytics and biomedical computing.

As the first tenured faculty member in Computer Science, you were called on early to play a major role in building the department. You were chair from 1973 to 1977, during the first growth spurt; and from 1985 to 1991, the second spurt; and from 1997 to 1999, when not shrinking was nearly as good as growing. You were instrumental in the creation of the graduate program in 1971 and the undergraduate major in 1974. And even when you were not chair, you were Computer Science’s institutional expert, the person whom everyone asked for advice on how to deal with the administration.

Your students, the junior faculty and the postdoctoral fellows you have mentored, and your colleagues are all aware that you are an expert on `splines,’ a term that comes from the flexible devices shipbuilders use to draw smooth shapes. While we do not know exactly what you will be doing in the future, we do know that your intellectual flexibility rivals that of the splines themselves—and so we await your next productive reinvention with affectionate curiosity and interest.

Tribute Editor: Penelope Laurans