Michael Darwin Morley (September 29, 1930 – October 11, 2020) was an American
mathematician. At his death in 2020, Morley was professor emeritus at
Cornell University. His research was in
mathematical logic and
model theory, and he is best known for
Morley's categoricity theorem, which he proved in his PhD thesis ''Categoricity in Power'' in 1962.
Early life and education
Morley was born in
Youngstown, Ohio, on September 29, 1930.
He obtained his BS in mathematics from
Case Institute of Technology in 1951 and his PhD in mathematics from the
University of Chicago in 1962. Morley's formal PhD advisor at the University of Chicago was
Saunders Mac Lane, but he completed his thesis under the guidance of
Robert Vaught at the
University of California, Berkeley.
[ His dissertation was titled ''Categoricity in Power''.]
Career
Morley was an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1963 to 1967. He joined the faculty at Cornell University in 1967 as an associate professor, was promoted to professor in 1970, and became a professor emeritus in 2003.[ He served as president of the ]Association for Symbolic Logic
The Association for Symbolic Logic (ASL) is an international organization of specialists in mathematical logic and philosophical logic. The ASL was founded in 1936, and its first president was Alonzo Church. The current president of the ASL is ...
from 1986 to 1989.[
Morley received the 2003 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research from the American Mathematical Society for his 1965 paper "Categoricity in Power". This paper, his doctoral dissertation, introduced ]Morley rank In mathematical logic, Morley rank, introduced by , is a means of measuring the size of a subset of a model of a theory, generalizing the notion of dimension in algebraic geometry.
Definition
Fix a theory ''T'' with a model ''M''. The Morley ran ...
and proved Morley's categoricity theorem.[
]
Personal life
Morley died on October 11, 2020, in Sayre, Pennsylvania.[
]
Selected publications
*
See also
* Morley's problem
References
External links
Morley's home page
1930 births
2020 deaths
Cornell University faculty
University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty
University of Chicago alumni
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Model theorists
Writers from Youngstown, Ohio
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