William Browder (born January 6, 1934)Curriculum vitae
from Browder's web site, retrieved 2010-10-06. is an American

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

, specializing in

algebraic topology Algebraic topology is a branch of mathematics that uses tools from abstract algebra to study topological spaces. The basic goal is to find algebraic invariants that classify topological spaces up to homeomorphism, though usually most classify ...

differential topology In mathematics, differential topology is the field dealing with the topological properties and smooth properties of smooth manifolds. In this sense differential topology is distinct from the closely related field of differential geometry, which ...

and

differential geometry Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and mult ...

. Browder was one of the pioneers with Sergei Novikov,

Dennis Sullivan Dennis Parnell Sullivan (born February 12, 1941) is an American mathematician known for his work in algebraic topology, geometric topology, and dynamical systems. He holds the Albert Einstein Chair at the City University of New York Graduate C ...

and C. T. C. Wall of the

surgery theory In mathematics, specifically in geometric topology, surgery theory is a collection of techniques used to produce one finite-dimensional manifold from another in a 'controlled' way, introduced by . Milnor called this technique ''surgery'', while And ...

method for classifying

high-dimensional In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. Thus, a line has a dimension of one (1D) because only one coordi ...

manifold In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or ''n-manifold'' for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a n ...

s. He served as President of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meeting ...

until 1990.

Life and career

William Browder was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1934, the son of Raisa (née Berkmann), a

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

ish

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

n woman from

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, and

American Communist Party The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...

leader

Earl Browder Earl Russell Browder (May 20, 1891 – June 27, 1973) was an American politician, communist activist and leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Browder was the General Secretary of the CPUSA during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s. Durin ...

, from

Wichita, Kansas Wichita ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Sedgwick County. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 397,532. The Wichita metro area had a population of 647,610 in 2020. It is located in ...

. His father had moved to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

in 1927, where he met and married Raisa. Their sons Felix Browder and Andrew Browder (born 1931) were both born there. He attended local schools. He graduated from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

with a B.S. degree in 1954 and received his Ph.D. from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

in 1958, with a dissertation entitled '' Homology of

Loop Space In topology, a branch of mathematics, the loop space Ω''X'' of a pointed topological space ''X'' is the space of (based) loops in ''X'', i.e. continuous pointed maps from the pointed circle ''S''1 to ''X'', equipped with the compact-open topol ...

s,'' advised by

John Coleman Moore John Coleman Moore (May 27, 1923 – January 1, 2016) was an American mathematician. The Borel−Moore homology and Eilenberg–Moore spectral sequence are named after him. Early life and education Moore was born in 1923 in Staten Island, New ...

. Since 1964 Browder has been a professor at

; he was chair of the mathematics department at Princeton from 1971 to 1973. He was editor of the journal ''

Annals of Mathematics The ''Annals of Mathematics'' is a mathematical journal published every two months by Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. History The journal was established as ''The Analyst'' in 1874 and with Joel E. Hendricks as th ...

'' from 1969 to 1981, and president of the

from 1989 to 1991. Browder was elected to the

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the N ...

in 1980, the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

in 1984, and the

Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters is a Finnish academy for natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. It is known in Latin as Societas Scientiarum Fennica, in Swedish as Finska Vetenskaps-Societeten, and in Finnish as Suomen Ti ...

in 1990. In 1994 a conference was held at Princeton in celebration of his 60th birthday.. In 2012 a conference was held at Princeton on the occasion of his retirement.

Selected bibliography

;Books *"Surgery on Simply-Connected Manifolds",

Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete ''Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete''/''A Series of Modern Surveys in Mathematics'' is a series of scholarly monographs published by Springer Science+Business Media. The title literally means "Results in mathematics and related area ...

, vol. 65,

Springer-Verlag Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 ...

, Berlin (1972) *"Algebraic Topology and Algebraic

K-Theory In mathematics, K-theory is, roughly speaking, the study of a ring generated by vector bundles over a topological space or scheme. In algebraic topology, it is a cohomology theory known as topological K-theory. In algebra and algebraic geometr ...

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...

, 1987, ;Seminal papers *"Homotopy Type of Differentiable Manifolds", Proc. 1962 Aarhus Conference, published in Proc. 1993 *Oberwolfach Novikov Conjecture Conference proceedings, London Mathematical Society Lecture Notes 226 (1995) *"The Kervaire invariant of framed manifolds and its generalization",

90, 157–186 (1969)

References

External links

*
William Browder (AMS brief bio)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Browder, William 1934 births 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Living people American people of Russian-Jewish descent Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Presidents of the American Mathematical Society Princeton University alumni Princeton University faculty Topologists

William William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

Life and career

Selected bibliography

See also

References

External links