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Alfred Inselberg

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Alfred Inselberg (22 October 1936, Athens, Greece – 30 December 2019, Tel Aviv, Israel)[1] was an American-Israeli mathematician and computer scientist based at Tel Aviv University.

Inselberg started his career at the Biological Computer Laboratory based at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[2] He was part of a cybernetics group working on biomathematics developing mathematical models of the ear, neural networks, and computer models for vision and non-linear analysis, gaining a PhD [2] in mathematics and physics. During this period he participated in the Symposium on Principles of Self-Organization.[3] He is particularly noted for his work on parallel coordinates[4][5] [6] (||-coords), which he proposed in 1959, for the visualization of multidimensional geometries (as in linear algebra) and multivariate problems.

Early life and education

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This is a sectioned Messerschmidt 163 Rocket Motor

Inselberg was born in Athens, Greece. Later he attended Whittingehame College in Brighton, England. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) receiving a B.Sc. in Aeronautical Engineering. Together with Gary van Sant, and two other students under the guidance of Paul Torda, they founded the University of Illinois Rocket Society in 1953; four years prior to Sputnik. Continuing his studies at UIUC he obtained in 1965 a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and Physics under the joint guidance of Ray Langebartel and Heinz von Foerster.

Career

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Inselberg held senior research positions at IBM where he developed a mathematical model of the ear (cochlea) (Time November 1974) and later collision-avoidance algorithms for air traffic control (3 USA patents). Concurrently he had joint appointments at UCLA, USC, Technion and Ben Gurion University. Since 1995 he has been a professor at the School of Mathematical Sciences of Tel Aviv University. He was elected senior fellow at the San Diego Supercomputing Center in 1996. His textbook on "Parallel Coordinates: Visual Multidimensional Geometry", was published by Springer.

References

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  1. ^ ""אדם מיוחד במינו": המתמטיקאי הרענני האהוב, אלפרדו אינסלברג, הלך לעולמו - צומת השרון רעננה" [Special Man: Beloved Freshman Mathemaker, Alfredo Inselberg, Has passed away - Sharon Raanana Junction] (in Hebrew). 2019-12-31. Retrieved 2020-02-10.
  2. ^ a b "Background". San Diego SuperComputing Center. Archived from the original on 25 October 2016. Retrieved 24 October 2016.
  3. ^ Hutchinson, Jamie. ""Nerve center" of the cybernetic world Heinz von Foerster and the Biological Computer Laboratory". Biological Computer Laboratory. University of Illinois. Archived from the original on 17 August 2017. Retrieved 24 October 2016.
  4. ^ "Alfred Inselberg". Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication. Retrieved 24 October 2016.
  5. ^ Inselberg, Alfred (1985). "The Plane with Parallel Coordinates". Visual Computer. 1 (4): 69–91. doi:10.1007/BF01898350. S2CID 15933827.
  6. ^ Inselberg, Alfred (2009). Parallel Coordinates: Visual Multidimensional Geometry and its Applications. Springer. ISBN 978-0387215075.