[Axiom-math] Dr. Kovacic died April 1

[William Sit]

Dear Friends of Jerry Kovacic:

It is with great sadness that I am passing on the news that
Jerry Kovacic died of brain cancer at around 2:30 pm on
April 1, 2009. He was 67.

Jerry is well known for his eponymous algorithm for solving
linear second order differential equations, which was
implemented in Scratchpad (Axiom). His early work in the
late 1960's on the inverse problem for differential Galois
theory paved the way for a complete solution of this
difficult problem. He has been a visiting scholar at the
Department of Mathematics at The City College of The City
University New York since his retirement from a software
company, and he has made significant contributions to a
modernized treatment of differential algebraic geometry. For
the last few years, Jerry was an organizer for the Kolchin
Seminar in Differential Algebra, and until a month ago,
despite his fight with brain cancer, he continued to attend
the Kolchin
Seminar at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and participated in
discussions. 

We will miss him dearly.

Sadly,


William 
-- 
William Sit, Professor Emeritus
Department of Mathematics..Email: address@hidden
City College of New York................Tel: 212-650-5179
New York, NY 10031, USA.................Fax: 212-862-0004
Home page: .......http://scisun.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/~wyscc/