COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY RECORD November 12, 1993 Vol. 19 No. 10 LIPMAN BERS, 79, HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST, DIES Lipman Bers, the Columbia mathematician and human rights activist who helped obtain the release of several prominent Soviet dissidents in the 1970s, died at New Rochelle Hospital, New Rochelle, N.Y., on Oct. 29 at the age of 79. He had been ill with Parkinson's Disease and had suffered strokes, according to his son. He was a resident of New Rochelle. DAVIES PROFESSOR Bers, the Davies Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Columbia, was a well-known activist on behalf of Soviet dissident mathematicians and founded the Committee on Human Rights of the National Academy of Sciences. "His experiences in Europe motivated his activism in the human rights movement," said his son, Victor Bers, a professor of classics at Yale. On several occasions in the 1970s, he lobbied the government of the Soviet Union to release prominent mathematicians. He was an organizer of the International Defense Committee of Mathematicians and helped obtain the release of Soviet mathematician Yuri Shikhanovich in 1974. At the request of dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov, he organized mathematicians attending a Vancouver conference in 1974 to petition Premier Alexei Kosygin for the release of Soviet mathematician Leonid Plyushch. In 1981, he wrote to "The New York Times" of his concern for Sakharov, then being held in prison. Bers extended an invitation to Valentin Turchin, a Soviet dissident and head of the Moscow branch of Amnesty International, to teach at Columbia. Turchin, a physicist who specialized in computer languages, accepted and taught in the spring of 1979 as an adjunct associate professor of mathematical statistics. He was later a research fellow at the Courant Institute of Mathematics at N.Y.U. When two prominent mathematicians, the brothers David and Gregory Chudnovsky, sought in 1977 to emigrate from the Soviet Union, they lost their research posts in Kiev and their elderly parents were badly beaten. Bers began an international campaign to convince the Soviet government to allow the brothers to leave, and enlisted the support of the Committee of Concerned Scientists and political figures such as Senator Henry Jackson. The brothers were granted visas and in 1978 came to Columbia to assume posts as associate research scientists. As a teacher, "he was exceptionally inspiring," Troels Jorgensen, professor and chairman of mathematics at Columbia, said. Almost 50 graduate students received their doctorates under his direction, at Columbia and elsewhere, and he encouraged women to pursue academic careers in mathematics. "He is known for his breadth of knowledge, depth of insight and speaking wit," wrote Masatake Kuranishi, who succeeded Bers as Davies Professor, in a letter nominating him for the New York City Award for Science and Technology. In presenting the award to Bers in 1985, Mayor Edward I. Koch cited his "influential and creative contribution to modern mathematics, his inspiring guidance to generations of students and his tireless campaign in support of the human rights of persecuted scientists throughout the world." Bers published nearly 100 research papers in mathematics journals and was internationally known for his work in mathematical analysis and geometry. His earliest work concerned the study of differential equations and their applications, for example, in the dynamics of gases. He also developed the important theory of pseudoanalytic functions. Perhaps his greatest contributions were to the theory of quasiconformal mappings and their application to the theory of Riemann surfaces and Kleinian groups. In his later years, he was a leader in this field, making it one of the most active and successful disciplines in modern mathematics. He chaired the Committee on Support of Research in the Mathematical Sciences, a group of scholars who produced a report for the National Academy of Sciences that in 1969 concluded the United States was a world leader in mathematics teaching and research. The report portrayed mathematics as a "leading wedge" of the nation's scientific effort and called for increased funding. LATVIA NATIVE Bers was a native of Riga, Latvia, where he attended elementary and secondary schools and the University of Latvia. The son of politically active Jews, he protested against the government that took power in May 1934 and was pursued by the Latvian police. He escaped to Czechoslovakia and completed his mathematics training at Charles University in Prague, earning a doctorate in 1938. That was the year of the Munich Pact, and Bers fled to Paris and then, in 1940, ten days before the German Occupation, to the United States. He was a research associate at Brown during World War II and then joined the faculties, successively, of Syracuse (1945-49), the Institute for Advanced Study (1949-51), and N.Y.U. (1951-64). Bers joined Columbia in 1964 as a professor of mathematics and served as department chairman from 1972 to 1975. He was named Davies Professor in 1973 and Davies Professor Emeritus in 1982. He served as special professor at Columbia from 1982 to 1984. He took a part-time position as visiting professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center in 1985. The Columbia mathematician was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and was chairman of the Mathematics Section from 1967 to 1970. He served as chairman of the Division of Mathematical Sciences of the National Research Council (1969-71), president of the American Mathematical Society (1975-77) and chairman of the U.S. National Committee on Mathematics (1977-81). He was named Guggenheim Fellow in 1978 and received the Human Rights Award of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1986. In addition to his son, Victor, of Hamden, Conn., he is survived by his wife of 55 years, Mary Kagan Bers, a half-sister, Shelly Spungin of Rehovoth, Israel, a daughter, Ruth Shapiro of New York City, five granddaughters, among them Alice Bers, a 1993 graduate of Columbia College, and one great-grandson. A memorial service will be held Sun., Dec. 5, at 2:00 P.M, in Altschul Auditorium, 417 International Affairs Building.