Meinhard E. Mayer


Meinhard Edwin Mayer was a Romanian–born American Professor Emeritus of Physics and Mathematics at the University of California, Irvine, which he joined in 1966.

Biography

He was born on March 18, 1929 in Cernăuți. He experienced both the Soviet occupation of Northern Bukovina and, as a Jew, deportation to the Transnistria Governorate. He received his Ph.D from the University of Bucharest in 1957, where he taught until 1961.
He then taught at Brandeis University and Indiana University before moving to the University of California, Irvine in 1966, where he taught until his retirement. He also took sabbaticals to various institutes, including the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques and MIT.
He had a deep interest in music, and in Yiddish language and literature.
He died in Newport Beach, California on December 11, 2011. He is survived by his wife Ruth, his children Elma Mayer and Niels Mayer, and his grandchildren Jonathan Mayer, Juniper Woodbury, and Moss Woodbury.

Research

His research interests range from geometric methods in gauge theory, to the application of wavelets in turbulence. He was an early contributor to the theory of vector-bosons and electro-weak unification, which later became the Standard model, and an early advocate of the use of fiber bundles in gauge theory.
He was a co-author of Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001