Robinson, Abraham

Abraham Robinson was born in Germany in 1918. He was studying at the Sorbonne in 1940 when he (a Jew) went to England to escape Hitler's encroachment on France. While in England, he joined the Free French Air Force, but was sent to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough so that his mathematical skills could be put to use for the war effort. After the war, he earned a Master of Science from Hebrew University in 1946 and a Ph. D. at the University of London in 1949. He taught different subjects at several prestigious universities, including aerodynamics at the College of Aerodynamics at Cranfield, mathematics at the University of Toronto, mathematics at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, mathematics and philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, and mathematics at Yale University. He died from pancreatic cancer in 1974, at the age of 56.

His interests included physics, pure mathematics, fluid mechanics, and relations between logic and mathematics. He contributed to the development of Model Theory and is known for inventing non-standard analysis.