The following has been extracted from the biography prepared by Prof. E. O. Tuck for the Journal of Engineering Mathematics. See oe.mit.edu/flowlab/NewmanBook/Biography_06.pdf for the full biography.

John Nicholas (Nick) Newman was born in New Haven, Connecticut in1935. He completed his secondary education at The George School, a Quakerboarding school in Pennsylvania, where he met Kathleen Smedley Kirk. Theywere married in 1956. They have three children, Jim, Nancy and Carol, and5 grandchildren.

Nick’s degrees (S.B. 1956, S.M. 1957 and Sc.D. 1960) are all from MIT, Cambridge, Mass., and were all taken in the field of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. However, being strongly influenced and inspired by his supervisor, the mathematician Fritz Ursell, Nick’s work at the doctoral level began to be quite mathematical. This mathematical theme continued throughout his career, although his main research application interests remained in naval architecture, with emphasis on ship hydrodynamics.

The two major Newman employers were the David Taylor Model Basin(1959-1967) and MIT (1967- 1996). At DTMB, he joined a particularly active group known as “Code 584” led by Francis Ogilvie, which was part of the Hydromechanics Laboratory whose head was Bill Cummins. Through-out his 8 years in Code 584, Nick was exposed to (and/or was the source of) an endless stream of interesting and challenging problems in the naval area. A number of young researchers joined Code 584, in part because of the attraction of working with Newman These included people who made significant contributions to ship hydrodynamics then or later, such as Chrisvon Kerczek, Nils Salvesen, Choung Mouk Lee, and E O Tuck.

In 1966–7, there was an exodus from Code 584, with Tuck, Newman and Ogilvie all moving to academic positions. Nick’s choice to move back to his alma mater led to a long academic career at MIT. During that period he supervised 30 or more graduate students, including 13 doctorates. Among many highlights of Nwewman’s career have been publication of his landmark book “Marine Hydrodynamics” in 1977, initiation (together with David Evans) in 1985 of the annual International Workshop on Water Waves and Floating Bodies, now in its 21st year, election to the National Academy of Engineering in 1989, development (with Paul Sclavounos and others) of the body-wave interaction code WAMIT through the 1980s, and publication of more than 150 technical papers.