Peter Greenberg ’77

Peter Greenberg, a mathematics lecturer at the Institut Fourier of the Univ. of Grenoble in France, was killed Dec. 10, 1993, when a car struck the bicycle he was riding. Peter was born in Boston, but attended high school in Tallahassee, Fla., and was valedictorian of his class there. At Princeton, he majored in mathematics, played the flute in the marching band, and graduated cum laude.

Peter earned his Ph.D. in math at M.I.T., then taught at North Dakota State Univ.; in 1985, he was named its Teacher of the Year. After that, Peter accepted a faculty post at the Centro de Investigacion y de Estudious Avanzados del I.P.N., a research institute in Mexico City. He later moved to France and taught at Lille and Strasbourg before settling in Grenoble. He collaborated and studied with European mathematicians in Bielefeld, Frankfurt, Geneva, and Prague, and published many papers.

Peter was one of our best-at home discussing new ideas in foliations and transformation groups, or history, politics, and philosophy. Warm-hearted and humorous, Peter charmed people with his disdain for the unimaginative and his directness.

We grieve Peter's loss with his parents, Mike and Rima; his brothers, Karl and Jack; and his grandmother Ruth.

Peter loved these lines by Pablo Neruda:

"Cuerpo mas puro que un ola

sal que lava la lines

y el ave lucida

volando sin raices.”