[2] Born in Paterson, New Jersey on July 31, 1923, Keller attended Eastside High School, where he was a member of the math team.
[3] After earning his undergraduate degree in 1943 at New York University, Keller obtained his PhD in 1948 from NYU under the supervision of Richard Courant.
With Patrick B. Warren, Robin C. Ball and Raymond E. Goldstein, Keller was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 2012 for calculating the forces that shape and move ponytail hair.
[8] Keller's second wife, Alice S. Whittemore, started her career as a pure mathematician but shifted her interests to epidemiology and biostatistics.
Joseph Keller died in Stanford, California on September 7, 2016, from a recurrence of kidney cancer first diagnosed in 2003.