Noted Theorist, 70, Helped to Develop Computers

Tibor Rado, a mathematician noted for his many original contributions and regarded by his colleagues as a scientist of international stature, died Wednesday at Daytona Beach. Fla., after a long illness. He was 70 years old.

Mr. Rado was one of the galaxy of Hungarian mathematicians who came to the United States after World War I and imparted a significant impulse to the development of mathematical studies. John Von Neumann was one of this group of men who achieved worldwide reputations through their work in the United States.

Mr. Rado's contributions to mathematical theory ranged from geometry to abstract formulas, including such subjects as calculus of variations, analysis in general, conformal mapping, minimal surfaces, complex functions, geometry of area, Rieman surfaces and plateau problems.

During his last decade he concerned himself with computers. According to Dr. Arnold Ross, a colleague at Ohio State University, his contributions to the development of computers were fundamental.

A Prisoner in Siberia

Mr. Rado's life was marked with adventures worthy of a novelist's attention. He was born in Budapest on. June 2, 1895. From 1913 to 1915 he attended the Polytechnic Institute in tha Hungarian capital. He then joined the Hungarian armed forces as a first lieutenant. He was captured on the Russian front and sent to Siberia.

He escaped from the prisoners' camp and his subsequent odyssey look him to the Arctic regions of Russia, where he lived with Eskimos while moving slowly westward seeking final escape to his homeland. After thousands of miles across the Arctic wastelands, Mr. Rado returned to Hungary and resumed his education. In 1923 he received a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Szeged.

Mr. Rado taught for a brief period at the University of Szeged and then went to Germany as a research fellow for the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1929 he came to the United States. He lectured at Harvard University and the Rice Institute and in 1930 joined the faculty of Ohio State University at Columbus.

First Publication in 1933

Three years later Mr. Rado published his first original contribution to mathematical thought "On the Problem of Plateau" which was translated into every western language and brought him instant fame. In 1935 he published his second work "Subharmonic Functions." The same year Mr. Rado became a United States citizen.

In 1942 he was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago. As World War II entered its final phase he interrupted his academic career to render a special service to the United States Government. As a science consultant to the armed forces, he was sent to Germany to find German scientists needed by the United States as it approached the nuclear and missile age.

Mr. Rado then returned to his research at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, N.J. In 1948 he became chairman of the department of mathematics at Ohio State University, a position he held through 1948. The following year he was named research professor. Last June he retired from teaching but continued to publish the results of his research in books and papers.

Mr. Rado is survived by his widow, the former Ida Barabas de Albis of Edgewater, Fla.; a son, Theodore Alexander Rado of Los Angeles, and a daughter, Mrs. William Santasiere of Simsbury, Conn.

Department of Mathematics