Abraham Robinson
Abraham Robinson was born in Waldenburg, Germany - which is now in Poland - in 1918. Because of the anti-Jewish laws adopted by Germany in 1933, his family moved to the British Mandate of Palestine (now Israel) where Abraham entered Hebrew University and studied mathematics. He graduated in 1939 and was awarded a scholarship at the Sorbonne. But his graduate studies were cut short in 1940 when Germany invaded France. He managed to get to England by catching one of the last boats that were moving refugees from Bordeaux across the Channel.
After first joining the Free French Forces, Abraham transferred to the RAF as a Scientific Officer. Following the war he obtained a doctorate from the University of London. He then taught in Toronto, Israel, and at UCLA before taking a professorship at Yale.
Although Abraham worked in a variety of fields ranging from applied mathematics (with considerable work in aerodynamics), mathematical logic, and model theory, he is best remembered to the layman - and in an Honest CooperToons Opinion justly so - for creating a system of mathematics that should be used to teach calculus but, alas, as a brief look at contemporary textbooks shows, rarely is.
But if you'd like to learn how your calculus course could have been made much easier - and how Abraham led the way - just click here.