In memoriam: 9/11's first victim, Dan Lewin

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Daniel "Danny" Mark Lewin (Hebrew: דניאל (דנ&#1497 מארק לוין‎ (May 14, 1970 – September 11, 2001) was an American-Israeli mathematician and entrepreneur best known for co-founding internet company Akamai Technologies. He died in the September 11 attacks.

Lewin was born in Denver, Colorado and raised in Israel.

He served for four years in the Israel Defense Forces as an officer in Sayeret Matkal, one of the more notable IDF special forces units. Lewin earned the rank of captain.

He attended the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa while simultaneously working at IBM's research laboratory in the city. While at IBM, he was responsible for developing the Genesys system, a processor verification tool that is used widely within IBM and in other companies such as Advanced Micro Devices and SGS-Thomson.

Upon receiving a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science, summa cum laude, in 1995,[4] he traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to begin graduate studies toward a Ph.D at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1996. While there, he and his advisor, Professor F. Thomson Leighton, came up with innovative algorithms for optimizing Internet traffic. These algorithms became the basis for Akamai Technologies, which the two founded in 1998. Lewin served as the company's chief technology officer and a board member, and during the height of the Internet boom achieved great wealth. He was posthumously named one of the most influential figures of the Internet age.

Lewin was fatally stabbed aboard American Airlines Flight 11 as it was hijacked during the September 11 attacks. A 2002 FAA memo suggests he may have been killed by Satam al-Suqami after he attempted to foil the hijacking. According to the FAA, Lewin was seated in business class in seat 9B, close to hijackers Mohamed Atta, Abdulaziz al-Omari and al Suqami (who was possibly seated behind him). It was first reported that he had been shot by al Suqami, although this assertion was later changed to a stabbing. According to the 9/11 Commission, was stabbed by one of the hijackers-probably Satam al Suqami, who was seated directly behind him. This may have occurred when Lewin tried to confront one of the hijackers in front of him, not realizing that al Suqami was sitting just behind him. Lewin was identified as the first victim of the September 11 attacks.

After his death, the intersection of Main and Vassar Streets in Cambridge, Massachusetts was renamed "Danny Lewin Square" in his honor. The award given to the best student-authored paper at the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC) was named after him as the Danny Lewin Best Student Paper Award.

Lewin is survived by his wife Anne and his two sons, Eitan and Itamar, who were aged five and eight during the September 2001 attacks.

Lewin’s name is located on Panel N-75 of the National September 11 Memorial’s North Pool, along with those of other passengers of Flight 11.​

In 2013, a biography of Lewin was published called No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet (Da Capo Press), by Molly Knight Raskin.

Source: Wiki