ABSTRACT
Zipporah “Fagi” Levinson, wife of the late Professor Norman Levinson, is a vibrant and irreplaceable part of the Mathematics Department’s institutional memory and perhaps the person best qualifi ed to put a human face on the period when the department was coming into its own as a full-fl edged research entity. Warm, down-to-earth, yet acutely conscious of the lofty endeavor that her husband and his colleagues were devoted to, she was the department’s unquestioned “den mother” for decades, a sympathetic ear and helping hand to the likes of Norbert Wiener and John Nash. “I felt comfortable with mathematicians,” she said. “They are an unconventional group, to be sure, but very decent people.” Clearly devoted to her husband’s memory, Fagi Levinson retains a humorous, no-nonsense view of his idiosyncrasies and those of the colleagues who surrounded him.
