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William "Velvel" Kahan was born in Canada and studied mathematics at the University of Toronto for both his undergraduate and graduate degrees. He joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, in 1968 and held a joint appointment in the Department of Mathematics as well as the new Department of Computer Science. When the two departments merged to form the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences in 1973, he became a full professor. Kahan retired in 2008, having made significant contributions to the field of scientific computing, particularly in the development of the IEEE 754-1985 standard for floating-point arithmetic. He created a program called "paranoia" in the 1980s to test for potential floating-point bugs and developed the Kahan summation algorithm to minimize errors in adding sequences of finite precision floating-point numbers. Kahan's remarkable work in numerical analysis was recognized when he received the ACM A.M. Turing Award in 1989.
The Mathematics Subject GRE is required for the Fall 2026 admissions cycle. General GRE is optional.