Gordon Thomas Whyburn
Gordon Thomas Whyburn (born January 7, 1904 in Lewisville , Texas , † September 8, 1969 in Charlottesville , Virginia ) was an American mathematician who dealt with the topology of point sets.
Whyburn studied chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin (bachelor's degree in 1925) and switched to mathematics under the influence of his teacher Robert Lee Moore , but made his master's degree in chemistry in 1926. He received his PhD in mathematics in 1927 and was then adjunct professor at the University of Texas. In 1929/30 he was a Guggenheim Fellow in Vienna with Hans Hahn and in Warsaw with Kazimierz Kuratowski and Sierpinski . He was then an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University and from 1934 professor at the University of Virginia , where he stayed for the rest of his career. He was chairman of the mathematics faculty there, but resigned from it in 1966 after a first heart attack. His successor as dean was his student Edwin E. Floyd . Among other things, Whyburn was visiting professor at Stanford University in 1952/3 .
His brother William Marvin Whyburn (1901-1972) was also a mathematician, who studied with him in Austin and later was a professor at UCLA , specializing in ordinary differential equations.
In 1938 Whyburn received the Chauvenet Prize , and in 1951 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences .
Since 1925 he was married to the mathematician Lucille Smith.
Fonts
- Analytic Topology, AMS 1942
- Topological Analysis, Princeton University Press 1958, 1964
- with Edwin Duda: Dynamic Topology, Springer, Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics, 1979
Web links
- John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Gordon Thomas Whyburn. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Whyburn, Gordon Thomas |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 7, 1904 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lewisville , Texas |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 8, 1969 |
| Place of death | Charlottesville , Virginia |