Herbert Greenberg went to college at age 14 and became a mathematician. But he also played the piano, loved to write limericks and had a knack for clowning, friends said.
“Broadway lost. He could have been a lyricist,” said a former fellow colleague, Martin Robbins.
His late brother, Stanley Greenberg, was a screenwriter for movies and television.
“I think in his heart of hearts, he (Herbert) wanted to be Groucho Marx,” said another colleague, Bill Dorn. “He had one of the quickest minds I’ve ever known.”
Greenberg, who died at 85, was the longtime head of the mathematics and computer-science department at the University of Denver. A memorial will be planned this spring.
Friends said Greenberg turned down better-paying jobs in industry because he loved teaching.
Dorn said Greenberg was his adviser, “and he was brilliant.”
Greenberg caused a stir in the scientific community when he wrote an article for Encyclopedia Britannica titled “Americans, Don’t Give an Inch.” In it, he wrote that it would be a bad idea for Americans to switch to the metric system. He thought it was fine for industry and science but that the public couldn’t adapt if it were forced to use the metric system.
“Just changing the road signs would be an astronomical expense,” he wrote.
“He got hate mail from that article,” said his son, Walter, of Peoria, Ill.
Herbert Julius Greenberg was born in Chicago on Nov. 28, 1921, and entered Northwestern University at 14.
He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees there and a Ph.D. from Brown University in Providence, R.I.
Greenberg saved all his report cards, “and the only non-A he ever had was in gym,” said his son.
Greenberg received a deferment from World War II and instead was assigned to the Navy to help figure out a way to protect U.S. harbors during wartime.
He came up with a “net of rings” to be installed in harbors, said his son.
“It was like a huge tennis net and would have caught a torpedo without breaking,” Dorn said.
Greenberg married Margery E. Jacobson on June 23, 1946. They met in college.
He taught at Carnegie Institute of Technology, New York University, the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University. He worked for IBM, where he taught classes using computers – almost unheard of in the 1950s.
In addition to his wife and son, he is survived by his daughter, Elizabeth Greenberg of Koror, Palau; and four grandchildren. He was preceded in death by a daughter, Martha Greenberg Phillips.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at vculver@denverpost.com or 303-954-1223.
