"He seemed to approach everything, even difficult matters, with kindness, with gentleness, with humor - and in a perpetual state of childlike curiosity.
"He was soft-spoken, but people always stopped to listen to what he had to say."
Leon Ehrenpreis, who also had a passionate love of Israel and often taught there, died of heart failure Aug. 16 at the age of 80. He lived in Brooklyn.
At the height of the Intifada, the violent Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the early 2000s, he ran a marathon wearing an Israeli Defense Forces T-shirt and hat.
He joined the Temple faculty in 1984.
"Professor Ehrenpreis was a huge presence in our department," Letzter said.
"While most mathematicians are highly specialized, Leon could speak with expertise on a vast array of mathematical subjects.
"He made profound contributions to 20th-century mathematics in general, and played a fundamental role in the development of the research mission of the mathematics department at Temple. He counted some of the leading mathematicians of our time as his friends and peers."
Ehrenpreis was a leading scholar of Talmudic texts.
He received his rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, a world-renowned Hebrew scholar, and served as an adviser on mathematical and scientific issues to Feinstein until his death in 1986.
Ehrenpreis grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, and the Bronx.
He graduated from Stuyvesant High School and received his bachelor's degree from City College of New York. He earned his doctorate in 1953 from Columbia University.
