William S. Massey

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William Schumacher Massey (born August 23, 1920 in Granville , Illinois , † June 17, 2017 in Hamden , Connecticut ) was an American mathematician who studied algebraic topology .

Massey studied at the University of Chicago with a bachelor's degree in 1941 and a master's degree in 1942 and received his doctorate in 1948 from Princeton University under Norman Steenrod (Classification of mappings of an (n + 1) -dimensional space into an n-sphere) , where he was a Fellow of the Office of Naval Research from 1948 to 1950. In 1950 he became an assistant professor and in 1955 a professor at Brown University (where he was visiting associate professor at Princeton in 1954/55). From 1960 until his retirement in 1991 he was a professor at Yale University , where he headed the faculty from 1968 to 1971.

Massey wrote several textbooks on algebraic topology. A cohomology operation, the Massey product, is named after him. In 1952 he introduced the method of Exact pairs (Exact couples) a system for calculation of spectral sequences.

He had been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1958 .

Fonts

  • Algebraic Topology- an introduction, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, Springer Verlag 1977
  • A basic course in algebraic topology, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, Springer Verlag 1991
  • Singular homology theory, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, Springer Verlag 1980
  • Homology and cohomology theory: an approach based on Alexander-Spanier cochains, New York: Dekker 1978

Individual evidence

  1. Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. William Massey 1920--2017 Obituary. In: The New Haven Register. legacy.com, June 22, 2017, accessed June 23, 2017 .
  3. ^ William S. Massey in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)Template: MathGenealogyProject / Maintenance / id used
  4. Massey, Some higher order cohomology operations, Symposium internacional de topología algebraica (International symposium on algebraic topology), Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and UNESCO, 1958, pp. 145–154
  5. ^ Massey, Exact couples in algebraic topology. I, II, Annals of Mathematics, Volume 56, 1952 363-396, III, IV, V, Annals of Mathematics, Volume 57, 1953, pp. 248-286