| Magazine Feature |

In His Prime

By Gershon Burstyn | October 14, 2020

Professor Hillel Furstenberg found order in randomness and won the world’s top math prize

Professor Hillel Furstenberg has spent a lifetime describing order in a seemingly random universe.

Which is why the manner in which the award-winning mathematician was introduced to his wife was so fitting.

His roommate from Princeton University, where Furstenberg was then enrolled in the mathematics doctoral program, had seen a young woman on a subway train reading a philosophy book — not the most common sight in 1957.

Rochelle Cohen had come from her hometown of Chicago to spend the year in New York City, where she was renting a room in Boro Park. A few months later, when Simchas Torah arrived, she made her way to a local shul to watch the men dance. As it happens, Furstenberg’s roommate was celebrating Yom Tov at that same shul, and recognizing the girl on the subway and thinking of his bachelor roommate, he approached Rochelle and said: “I know just the guy for you.”

True, a mathematician and a philosophy aficionada don’t necessarily seem like a match made in Heaven. “But I often say that one of the reasons she married me,” relates Furstenberg, the 2020 winner of the Abel Prize, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize of mathematics, “is because I convinced her that there’s beauty in mathematics. Beauty comes from the hidden, the nistar, not the nigleh.”

Decades later, a further indication of Furstenberg’s pursuit of order amid chaos came on the day we met. After scheduling and rescheduling our interview several times because of the coronavirus pandemic — Furstenberg is 84 and was not accepting many visitors — we met on the day the professor should have been in Norway accepting the most coveted prize in mathematics. If not for the coronavirus, he would have been in faraway Oslo, delivering a lecture on mathematics to an audience of his peers.

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters awarded Furstenberg, along with Yale University mathematician Gregory Margulis, the Abel Prize for “pioneering the use of methods from probability and dynamics in group theory, number theory, and combinatorics.”

If you don’t know what that means, join the club. The last time I took a math class was approximately 35 years ago (Algebra II) — and I believe I received a B-minus.

But Furstenberg, a multiple-time prizewinner in his field (including winning the Israel Prize in 1993 and the Wolf Prize in mathematics — Israel’s version of the Nobel Prize — in 2007), was patient with my numerophobia and over the course of two hours patiently guided me through the disjointedness of ergodic systems, prediction theory, and the Szemerédi Theorem. There is indeed order in a seemingly random universe, and Hillel Furstenberg’s life proves it.

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Comments (2)

0
Binyomin Friedman
5 years ago
Reply

Your fine article about Hillel Furstenberg mentioned in passing that he spent four years at the University of Minnesota. What the author did not mention — and could not have known — was the impact that Hillel and Rochel Furstenberg had on the small frum community of Minneapolis in those days.
Hillel was loved not only as a near-perfect baal korei and outstanding substitute for the rabbi’s blatt shiur, but as a humble man of impeccable middos. It brought great pride to the community that “their” Hillel who proudly wore his yarmulke was respected in the academic world as an outstanding mathematician.
In those days, parents such as mine — never having had a Torah education — struggled with their identities as frum Jews and their commitment to keep their children in day school. As a child I remember my parents marveling over the Furstenbergs whose secular achievements hadn’t diYour fine article about Hillel Furstenberg mentioned in passing that he spent four years at the University of Minnesota. What the author did not mention — and could not have known — was the impact that Hillel and Rochel Furstenberg had on the small frum community of Minneapolis in those days.
Hillel was loved not only as a near-perfect baal korei and outstanding substitute for the rabbi’s blatt shiur, but as a humble man of impeccable middos. It brought great pride to the community that “their” Hillel who proudly wore his yarmulke was respected in the academic world as an outstanding mathematician.
In those days, parents such as mine — never having had a Torah education — struggled with their identities as frum Jews and their commitment to keep their children in day school. As a child I remember my parents marveling over the Furstenbergs whose secular achievements hadn’t dimmed their Torah commitment one iota. The Furstenbergs were a shot of Jewish adrenaline to my parents and others to proudly raise Torah families.
As I read your article all of this came back to me and I realized that the appointment of Hillel Furstenberg as Professor of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota was not an act of randomness but actually part of a great process.mmed their Torah commitment one iota. The Furstenbergs were a shot of Jewish adrenaline to my parents and others to proudly raise Torah families.
As I read your article all of this came back to me and I realized that the appointment of Hillel Furstenberg as Professor of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota was not an act of randomness but actually part of a great process.
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Rabbi Dr. Yosef Rosenshein
5 years ago
Reply

Thank you for recognizing the greatness of Professor Hillel (Harry) Furstenberg in last week’s Mishpacha. He not only is a great talmid chacham and a great mathematician, but also a most modest person.
Harry was my chavrusa for two or three years in the high school of Yeshiva University (MTA). I remember two interesting stories about him: After suffering through the French regents during which I eked out a 78 after much struggle, I asked Harry how did he get a 100? He said, without even a smile, that he went through the review book over the weekend.
I remember Harry wanting very much to build an ultimate movement machine, but he did not have the funds to buy the necessary parts. I gladly became his banker for the few dollars but never really got all the dividends from his great work, which he said was never completed successfully.
I never understood why he wanted me as a chavrusa since I possessed nowhere near his intelligence. However, I know that despite what he said during the interview in Mishpacha he was able to understand Rav Yosef Ber Soloveitchik’s great shiurim very easily. He was one of three mathematicians in that shiur — the others were Dr. Sternberg, who I believe was in Harvard, and Dr. Lewittis, who is in CUNY.
May he continue to be a shining light to all of Torah and Eretz Yisrael.