Nathan Mendelsohn

Nathan Saul Mendelsohn, (April 14, 1917 – July 4, 2006) was an American-born mathematician who lived and worked in Canada. Mendelsohn was a researcher in several areas of discrete mathematics, including group theory and combinatorics.

Early life and education Mendelsohn was born in 1917 in Brooklyn, New York City, the eldest of four children of Samuel Mendelsohn (1880–1959) and Sylvia, née Kirschenbaum (1895–1984). His paternal grandparents, Hyman Mendelsohn (1846–1928) and Hinda, née Silverstone (1859–1942) had originally immigrated to Montreal from Romania in 1898. His uncle was noted open water swimmer, Shier Mendelson. In 1918, he and his family moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, after a fire destroyed the tenement they were living in. Mendelsohn and his family lived in a house at 13 Euclid Avenue.

Mendelsohn completed all his education at the University of Toronto. He would have been unable to attend university had he not won a four years' tuition and books scholarship. In 1938, he was on the University of Toronto team for the first Putnam Competition, along with Irving Kaplansky and John Coleman. The team placed first and each of the three team members won fifty dollars. Mendelsohn was a junior, the other two were seniors. The subsequent year Mendelsohn was barred from competition as at that time the winning university set the examination for the next year and its students were barred from competition. Mendelsohn completed his Ph.D. dissertation in 1941. It was titled "A Group-Theoretic Characterization of the General Projective Collineation Group", and summarized in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 1944. His supervisor was Gilbert de Beauregard Robinson.

Mendelsohn also began practising magic tricks in high school as a means of steadying a tremor in his hands. He placed second in the 1953 International Brotherhood of Magicians contest, behind Johnny Carson. Mendelsohn's son later remarked that Mendelsohn "understood that, as a Jew, he would never get a permanent position" at Queen's, as the university "already had a Jewish professor in the department."

During early summers at the University of Manitoba, Mendelsohn would travel to Quebec City to teach to supplement his $3,000 annual salary at the University of Manitoba.

Nathan Mendelsohn Prize In 2008 the Nathan Mendelsohn Prize was established by his family at the University of Manitoba for the highest ranking student at a Canadian University in Putnam Competition.