Adriano Mario Garsia

Adriano was born in Tunisia to Italian parents on a large intergenerational family farm. In 1947 Adriano, his parents and sister moved to Italy after their farm was taken away during World War II. At the University of Rome, Adriano discovered his love of mathematics. On the advice of his professors he immigrated to the United States eventually coming to the San Francisco Bay Area and Stanford completing his PHD in 1957.

Adriano believed that one must do what they feel most passionate about in life and so he pursued his mathematical career with great joy and perseverance despite his father Alfredo’s admonition that he would have to support him for the rest of his life.

Adriano said that the ability to approach a problem with sustained long term effort will get one farther than raw talent alone. At age 91 he was the oldest recipient of the prestigious NSF Grant, had mentored 36 graduate PHD students, written 4 books and 115 research works with 3549 citations in the areas of Analysis, Combinatorics, Representation Theory and Algebraic Geometry. In 2019 his lifetime accomplishment was celebrated at GarsiaFest, the third conference in his honor.

Contrary to his father’s admonition not only did he support himself but used his resources to generously support his family and students. For example Instead of paying himself a summer salary with his NSF grant, he gave the money to his PHD students so that they could devote themselves to their research instead of having to teach during the summer.

Father believed in supporting students from different walks of life becoming mathematicians. It didn’t matter if they had taken the requisite courses or had been admitted through the normal process. What mattered was that a person with a love of high level math and a willingness to work hard have a chance to earn a Phd. He advocated for his students and sought ways to get around the institutional obstacles preventing them from pursuing a degree. At age 91 no longer able to walk up steps He hooded his last Phd student Marino Romero in his garden in 2019 under a palm tree with great joy.

In his home life Adriano sought to recreate the life he had as a child in Tunisia. In honor of the lost farm his back yards always had figs, peaches and other fruit trees. His houses sat on the edge of canyons with the smell of sage rising in the dry heat just like the land of his youth.

In honor of his childhood summers in Hammamet he brought his family to the beach nearly everyday in summer. Graduate students and colleagues were more likely to find him doing math on the sand than in his office at the university. Those that came to the beach were always welcome for dinner at his house.

And what dinners! After a long day at the beach his table was graced with food he cooked to bring back the flavors of his childhood. Wonderful pastas and meat with lots garlic, olive oil, basil and other pungent herbs and plenty of salt. To be at his table was to be brought back to a time when food was a labor of love, and the enjoyment of family and togetherness was celebrated. Dinners were also a time of interesting conversation and stories of his life and experiences. Many of us treasure his stories.

Adriano was a genuinely unique thinker often sharing a thoughtful perspective that was not mainstream but based on acute observation. Out of such thinking a house was designed by him that was an 18 sided polygon and looked a bit like a spaceship with fantastic views of the surrounding hills. Of course some ideas were radically unconventional to the point of being humorous such as when he sought to rid the wall of his house of bees by attaching a vacuum cleaner to the entry to the hive and leaving it on for many hours.

Adriano is survived by:

• His wife Diane Favreau-Garsia, their daughter Gabriella Smith, her husband Chris and grandchildren Henry and Gabriel.

• His children from his prior marriage to Ruth Maria Garsia - Maya Santangelo and husband Ray and Adrian Garsia and his wife Jody and grandchildren Leo Santangelo, Anna Garsia and Christopher Garsia.

• His sister Marisa Tripodi, her daughter Louise and her grandchild Nicole.

May we who loved you strive to enjoy life the way you did, devote ourselves to our work passionately, open our homes with generosity and always add a generous amount of salt to our pasta water.