Max Shiffman (30 October 1914, New York City – 2 July 2000, Hayward, California) was an American mathematician, specializing in the calculus of variations, partial differential equations,[1] and hydrodynamics.
From 1945 to 1948 he was an associate professor at NYU, where he influenced many graduate students, including Clifford Gardner, Joe Keller, Martin Kruskal, Peter Lax, Cathleen Morawetz, and Louis Nirenberg.
[1] Szegő also brought to the Stanford mathematics department Donald C. Spencer, Albert Charles Schaeffer, Paul Garabedian, and Richard E.
[1] Merrill M. Flood's 1952 introduction to non-Soviet mathematicians of Kantorovich's 1939 paper Mathematical Methods of Organizing and Planning Production[8] is due to Shiffman in 1949.
With the support of his friends and a generous trustee of Stanford University, he was admitted to Chestnut Lodge, a prestigious psychiatric institute.
[1]In the summer of 1949 Shiffman gave a new proof of von Neumann's minimax theorem[10] with a generalization to concave-convex functions.
Upon his death Max Shiffman was survived by his sons, Bernard, a professor of mathematics, and David, an owner of an investment company, and by five grandchildren.