Dr. Steven A. Orszag, a renowned expert in computational fluid mechanics, died on May 1 at the age of 68. (His obituary in the New York Times can be accessed here.) One of his most important contributions was the development of spectral methods for solving complex fluid dynamics problems, greatly increasing the efficiency of the numerical calculations. These techniques are now standard in fluid dynamics, especially for turbulent flow, but are also used in a number of other applications of scientific computation.

It is one of those other topics that caused me to meet Steven. Dr. Orszag had a long collaboration with Dr. Eytan Barouch, of Clarkson and then Boston Universities. Eytan got involved in lithography simulation in the late 1980s (I worked with him quite a bit during those early years) and applied Orszag’s spectral methods to aerial image simulation problems. Eventually Barouch and Orszag formed Vector Technologies to market their lithography simulator FAIM. Orszag’s involvement was mostly advisory and on the technical side, so far as I could tell. In the 1990s Dr. Orszag was the coauthor of 16 SPIE proceedings papers on lithography simulation, and I met him a time or two at these conferences. Obviously bright and busy, it was clear to me that lithography was more of a hobby to Dr. Orszag, an interesting offshoot of his many scientific interests.

Steven Orszag also has a famous son – Peter Orszag, formerly the budget director for the Obama administration.