Lewis, Donald J. (Donald John), 1926-

Donald J. Lewis, Ph.D., Professor of Mathematics in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, was born in Adrian, Minnesota on January 25, 1926.

Lewis received his B.S. degree from the College of St. Thomas in 1946, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan in 1949 and 1950, respectively. From 1950-52 he was an instructor at The Ohio State University, and in 1952-53 he was a National Science Foundation (NSF) fellow at the Institute for Advance Study, Princeton. From 1953-61 he was a faculty member at Notre Dame University. He joined the University of Michigan as an associate professor in 1961 and was promoted to professor in 1963. Lewis served as chair of the Department of Mathematics from 1984-94.

Lewis' research focused on an area of number theory concerned primarily with Diophantine problems and encompassed the theory of algebraic number fields and function fields, and arithmetic geometry. He is the author of 55 research papers and a number of survey papers. He also directed 24 doctoral theses.

From 1995-99 Lewis was based in Washington D.C., as the director of the Division of Mathematical Sciences of the NSF. He received numerous awards including a Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award from the University in 1978, and an Alexander von Humboldt Preis in 1980. He was awarded the American Mathematical Society's Distinguished Public Service Award in 1995 in recognition of his many contributions to mathematics research and education.

Lewis retired from active faculty status on May 31, 2000. In June 2000 the Board of Regents named Donald J. Lewis professor emeritus of mathematics. (Board of Regents Retirement Memoir, June 2000).

From the guide to the Donald J. Lewis papers, 1961-2007, 1970-1995, (Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan)