Roy Lee Adler

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Roy Adler Obituary

1931 - 2016
Roy Lee Adler (85) died on July 26 at his home in Chappaqua, NY. Dr. Adler (Ph.D., Yale 1961), a longtime employee of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, was a fellow of the New York Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Mathematical Society. Among his seminal scientific achievements are the invention of topological entropy, Markov partitions for invertible maps and the application of symbolic dynamics to coding problems in information theory.

Dr. Adler's interest in the theorems of ergodic theory and dynamical systems led him to develop an algorithm to design codes to meet the constraints for data storage and transmission channels. A paper, including co-authors Don Coppersmith and Martin Hassner, documenting these developments won the IEEE, Information Theory Group 1985 Best Paper prize. Dr. Adler was awarded a Fourth Plateau Invention Achievement award, two IBM Research Outstanding Innovation awards, an Outstanding Technical Achievement award and the 2000 Research Patent Portfolio award.

He was a contributor to more than 60 publications and 10 patents on coding, printing, spine modeling, x-ray data acquisition and cryptography. He was also a caring and inspiring mentor to several young mathematicians. An intellectual with a sharp and dry wit, his passions included great food, opera, fishing, good friends, and most of all his family. Roy was married to the former Audrey Wanner who predeceased him in 1990 and then to Judith Hershaft who survives him. He was a dedicated and adoring father to his two children, Caroline Kosaka (Palo Alto, CA) and Michael Adler (Longmont, CO). Roy's love and affection continued to his stepchildren, Laura Hershaft Saltman (Athens, OH) and Stephen Hershaft (Rye Brook, NY) and nine grandchildren (Daniel, Jonathan, Nathan, Audrey, Bari, Anna, Brian, Adam and Jason).

Donations in memory of Roy be made to: www.webwhispers.org

To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.

Published by New York Times from Jul. 29 to Aug. 1, 2016.

Memories and Condolences
for Roy Adler

8 Entries

Bob Williams

February 15, 2017

WE talked about dynamics, symbolic and smooth, for over three decades. I'll never forget his response o Bruce Kitchen's request to bring "oyster crackers": He recognized the ambiguity and brought both kinds.

Ruth Brayton

September 23, 2016

Sincere condolences for the loss of a wonderful colleague and good friend.
Bob and Ruth Brayton

August 8, 2016

My condolences to Roy's family. May the God of comfort be with you all in your time of need.

Brian Marcus

August 1, 2016

I owe so much to Roy. His guidance in both professional and personal matters made a world of difference for me. But most of all I value his wonderful sense of humor which I will hold on to forever.

July 31, 2016

I am sorry to hear about the loss of your loves one.
My thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends, during and after these difficult times.

July 29, 2016

I know that you will miss Roy, may the God of all comfort give you the strength and ability to endure the difficult days and weeks ahead. John 17:3

Mike Boyle

July 27, 2016

Roy was so smart, free, funny and kind.

I was lucky to be a postdoc at IBM under Roy for a year in 1984-85. The lunch group finished with a local creation, "the Coin Game", a quirky process of bluff and bet. Roy and Audrey were wonderful to Roxanne and me and our young family.

Roy was creative, and very much a freethinker. (How often does someone try to apply differential geometry to bra design? Tell you whales really can't be that smart?) But he wasn't a freewheeler. He worked to understand a mathematical problem as completely and simply as he could, with a complete, clear and correct proof.

Once, I was telling Roy about a theorem. Roy said, and why would that be true? The fact was "proved" in papers by four well known mathematicians, but Roy was right -- the fact was false. Roy took nothing on faith.

Below is the dediciation in a 2014 preprint by Jerome Buzzi and me, "The almost Borel structure of surface diffeomorphisms, Markov shifts and their factors" (to appear in the Journal of the European Matheamtical Society).

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Dedicatory
This paper is dedicated to Roy Adler, coinventor of topological entropy [1], with gratitude for his kindness and in appreciation of his mathematical influence. This paper considers entropy and period for the almost Borel classification of Markov shifts; the seminal result of this type was the Adler-Marcus Theorem [3], which classified irreducible shifts of finite type up to almost topological conjugacy by topological entropy and period.

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In some Platonic ideal world, Roy is wisecracking, proving theorems and playing the Coin Game.

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