Eulogies: Dr. Robert W. Brooks

Dr. Robert W. Brooks, an interna-tionally renowned mathematician who made aliyah with his family from Los Angeles in 1995, died of a heart attack on Sept. 5, at the age of 49.

A native of Washington, D.C., he earned his doctorate degree from Harvard in differential geometry in 1977, taught at the University of Maryland from 1979 to 1984 and, after a year-long research fellowship at the Courant Institute of New York University, was appointed a professor of mathematics at USC.

Brooks was acknowledged interna-tionally as an expert in his field, which was primarily theoretical, but yielded practical applications in physics and computers.

During his 10 years in Los Angeles, Brooks and his wife, Dr. Sharon Schwartz-Brooks, a Kaiser West Los Angeles physician, had been founding members of a minyan at Congregation Beth Jacob, as well as active members of Young Israel of Century City, Young Israel of Beverly Hills and Congregation B’nai David-Judea.

In 1995, Brooks took a position as tenured professor at the Technion Institute in Haifa. His many awards and honors included an Alfred P. Sloan fellowship, a Fulbright senior fellowship, a Guastella fellowship and Technion’s Taub Prize for Excellence in Research.

In addition to his wife, Brooks is survived by his children, Simon, Tova, Isaac and Meir; parents, David and Harriet; and sisters, Betsy and Renana.

— David Margolis, Contributing Writer