Obituary: James Howard Case

James (Jim) Howard Case, 1940-2021. Photo courtesy of SIAM.

A man of diverse interests who was admired for his sense of humor, Jim was born in Rochester, NY, in 1940 to Charles Zopher Case and Mary Proctor Case. He grew up on a dairy farm in nearby Avon, NY, and graduated from Groton School in Massachusetts in 1958. Jim went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at the University of Rochester. As an undergraduate, he was a three-sport varsity athlete in football, swimming, and baseball; in 2013, he was inducted into Rochester’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

Jim’s overriding passion was to become a professional baseball pitcher, and he enthusiastically signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers organization. He was assigned to the Panama City Fliers (an affiliate of the Dodgers) and attended spring training in Vero Beach, Fla., but suffered a shoulder injury and was released in the spring of 1962. After the sudden end to his baseball career, Jim took a tramp steamer to Cannes, France; bought a bicycle; and headed north to Paris. He stopped along the way to enjoy Michelin-starred restaurants and spoke enough French to successfully order a meal. Following this experience, his favorite vacation was always a trip through the French countryside in search of good food and wine, and he remained a devoted patron of La Pyramide in Vienne.

Jim completed his master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Michigan in 1967 and wrote a dissertation on the equilibrium points of n-person differential games under the supervision of Robert McDowell Thrall. He was elected to Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society, while at Michigan. After graduation, Jim conducted postdoctoral research at Princeton University and the University of Wisconsin’s Mathematics Research Center. In 1970, he moved to Baltimore, Md., and joined the Operations Research and Industrial Engineering Department (now the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics) at Johns Hopkins University as an assistant professor. He left the school in 1976, later becoming a lecturer at Towson University and working for the Federal Trade Commission and American Petroleum Institute. 

Jim authored three books throughout his professional career, including Competition: The Birth of a New Science, as well as a number of book chapters and peer-reviewed journal papers on topics such as game theory and finance. In fact, his first published peer-reviewed paper appeared in the SIAM Journal on Control in 1969 [1]. In addition, Jim wrote for Mathematical Reviews and served as an associate editor of Operations Research from 1974-1979 and the American Mathematical Monthly from 1995-2001. He was also a member of the Mathematical Association of America and the International Society of BioPhysical Economics.

Jim was a frequent contributor to SIAM News and published both book reviews and freelance pieces based on SIAM conference lectures or other noteworthy topics. In the last 10 years alone, he wrote nearly 50 articles for SIAM News that covered a wide variety of subjects, including baseball statistics, communication networks, probability, big data algorithms, artificial intelligence, and a number of mathematical biographies; a complete archive of his work from June 2012 onward is available online. Jim’s most recent submission—a book review of Bounded Gaps Between Primes by Kevin Broughan—appeared in the September 2021 issue. 

Judges of the 2011 MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge (M3 Challenge), a program of SIAM, gather at SIAM headquarters in Philadelphia, Pa., to evaluate submitted papers from competing student teams. James Case (seventh from right, in the back) served as both a triage and contention judge for more than 10 years. Photo courtesy of SIAM.

Jim was also actively involved with the M3 Challenge, an annual mathematical modeling competition for high school students, and served as both a triage and contention judge for over 10 years. In 2016, a participating M3 team that had received an honorable mention prize reached out to SIAM’s M3 Challenge staff and asked if anyone in the SIAM or M3 community would be willing to visit the school and present the team certificates. Jim eagerly volunteered and drove 75 miles from Baltimore to Ashburn, Va., to attend the award ceremony at Stone Bridge High School — a reflection of his unwavering desire to inspire young people with a burgeoning interest in math.

Upon moving to Baltimore, Jim became an ardent fan of the Orioles, Colts, and eventually the Ravens. He was an avid downhill skier and instilled a passion for the sport in his children, their spouses, and his grandchildren, all of whom treasure memories of annual family ski vacations.

While teaching in British Columbia for a semester, Jim took a liking to hard cider. When he returned to Baltimore, he founded the Chesapeake Hard Cider Company in 1983. Jim owned and operated the company until 1991. In his spare time, he enjoyed membership with the L’Hirondelle Club, the 14 West Hamilton Street Club, and the Wednesday Club.

During his undergraduate years, Jim’s Rochester swim coach, Roman “Speed” Speegle, introduced him to Patricia (Pat) deYoung, a member of the women’s swim team; they married in 1962. Jim is survived by his wife Pat; children Martha, Caroline, and Charles, as well as their spouses; five grandchildren; and his sister Elizabeth. He will be greatly missed by his family, friends, and colleagues; the SIAM News staff; and the entire SIAM community.

SIAM News would like to thank the family of Jim Case for their contributions to this article.