Professor Emeritus Peter Lax (1926-2025)

May 19, 2025

The Courant Institute is saddened to announce that Professor Emeritus Peter Lax passed away on May 16th at the age of 99. 

Born in Budapest on May 1, 1926, Professor Lax first came to New York University in 1943 as a seventeen-year-old Stuyvesant High School graduate. After three semesters, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed at Los Alamos, where he worked as a calculator operator on the Manhattan Project.

After the war, he returned to NYU—earning his PhD in Mathematics under the supervision of Kurt O. Friedrichs in 1949. Professor Lax spent the entirety of his academic career at the Courant Institute, establishing himself as one of the most important mathematicians of the 20th century and one of the most beloved figures in our academic community.

Professor Lax enjoyed a storied career with significant contributions to mathematics, science, engineering, defense and government. His 1982 report on high-performance computing—widely known as the 'The Lax Report'—further cemented his position as an important and versatile mathematician. He was awarded the National Medal of Science (1986), the Wolf Prize (1987), and the Abel Prize (2005) among many others. You can read more about Professor Lax's extraordinary life and career in his New York Times obituary.

Professor Lax was a legendary mathematician and a committed educator, with 55 doctoral students and 430 doctoral decendants. "It is not possible to summarize the intellectual, cultural, or emotional impact of a man like Peter Lax," wrote Director Russel Caflisch, "so perhaps the simplest thing to say is thank you." We are sending our heartfelt condolences to Professor Lax's family, friends, and colleagues. He will be greatly missed by our entire community!