Alexander Doniphan Wallace (21 August 1905, in

Hampton, Virginia Hampton is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The population was 137,148 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities in Virginia, seve ...

, USA – 16 October 1985, in

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

, USA) was an American mathematician who introduced

proximity space In topology, a proximity space, also called a nearness space, is an axiomatization of the intuitive notion of "nearness" that hold set-to-set, as opposed to the better known point-to-set notion that characterize topological spaces. The concept was ...

s. Wallace received from the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...

B.A. in 1935, M.A. in 1936 and Ph.D. in 1940. He was an instructor at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1940–1941 and became an assistant professor in mathematics at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

in 1941 and remained there until 1947. He was a professor and chair of the mathematics department at

Tulane University The Tulane University of Louisiana (commonly referred to as Tulane University) is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by a cohort of medical doctors, it b ...

in 1947–1963. From 1963 until his retirement in 1973 he was a mathematics professor at the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida, United States. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida and a preem ...

. His doctoral students include

Chung Tao Yang Chung Tao Yang, or Chung-Tao Yang, Yang Zhongdao () (May 4, 1923 – 2005), was a notable Chinese American topologist. He was an academician of the Academia Sinica and served as the chair of the Department of Mathematics, University of Pennsylvani ...

Selected articles

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References

1905 births 1985 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians People from Hampton, Virginia Mathematicians from Virginia American topologists University of Virginia alumni University of Pennsylvania faculty Tulane University faculty University of Florida faculty {{US-mathematician-stub