Bob Paige and the IFIP Working Group 2.1

Bob Paige’s first contact with the IFIP Working Group 2.1 was the meeting #27 in Wheeling, West-Virginia, in 1980 which he attended as an invited observer. For me, this was also the first occasion in which I met him — however, without really getting into contact with him. His favorite interest and central Ph.D. topic on “finite differencing” was already known to WG 2.1 through Micha Sharir, a colleague of Bob’s from the Courant Institute, New York University. Unlike Bob, Micha had already participated as an observer in the two previous meetings #24 in Summit, New Jersey in 1978 and #25 in Brussels, Belgium in 1979. Therefore, from the groups (restricted) perspective, Micha seemed to be the one who genuinely represented the topic of finite differencing, certainly not knowing that — at this time — Bob had already done much more work in this area than Micha. Also, Micha was a more convincing “salesman”, and therefore he was the one to become a member of WG 2.1 at the Wheeling meeting — the same meeting, by the way, when I became a member of the group.