Featured Memoir
Hassler Whitney by John Morgan
“Hassler Whitney was a topologist extraordinaire. He began his mathematical work in the 1930s during an extremely active period in both algebraic and geometric topology. Hemade many important contributions that remain fundamental and foundational today. Also, as he pointed out in his summary of an influential conference on topology in Moscow in 1935, he was part of the wave of American mathematicians who were responsible for a shift in the center of topology from Europe to the United States. Most of these mathematicians were trained in Europe and fleeing the horror of the coming war. Whitney was one of the few fathers of this American flowering who was born in this country. Later there were many more.”
About the Series
Published since 1877, Biographical Memoirs provide the life histories and selected bibliographies of deceased National Academy of Sciences members. Colleagues familiar with the subject’s work write these memoirs and as such, the series provides a biographical history of science in America.
The Online Collection includes approximately 1,900 memoirs, including those of famed naturalist Louis Agassiz; Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; Thomas Edison; Alexander Graham Bell; noted anthropologist Margaret Mead; and psychologist and philosopher John Dewey.
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