Background
Orszag was born to a Jewish family in Manhattan, the son of Joseph Orszag, a lawyer
mathematician physicist university professor
Orszag was born to a Jewish family in Manhattan, the son of Joseph Orszag, a lawyer
Orszag was raised in Forest Hills, Queens and graduated from Forest Hills High School. In 1962, at the age of 19, he graduated with a Bachelor of Surgery in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi Fraternity. He did post graduate study at Cambridge University and in 1966 graduated with a Doctor of Philosophy in astrophysics from Princeton University.
"s paternal grandparents were emigrants from Hungary. His thesis adviser was Martin David Kruskal. In 1984, he was appointed Forrest East Hamrick Professor of Engineering.
In 1988, he accepted a position at Yale University and in 2000, he was named the Percey F. Smith Professor of Mathematics at Yale University from 2000 until his death in 2011. specialized in fluid dynamics, especially turbulence, computational physics and mathematics, electronic chip manufacturing, computer storage system design, and other topics in scientific computing.
His work included the development of spectral methods, pseudo-spectral methods, direct numerical simulations, renormalization group methods for turbulence, and very-large-eddy simulations. With Carl M. Bender he wrote Advanced Mathematical Methods for Scientists and Engineers: Asymptotic Methods and Perturbation Theory, a standard text on mathematical methods for scientists. has been listed as an Inter-Services Intelligence Highly Cited Author in Engineering by the Inter-Services Intelligence Web of Knowledge, Thomson Scientific Company.
In 1967, Orszag was appointed as a professor of applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he collaborated with Carl M. Bender and was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study.