David Kent Harrison (6 April 1931, Massachusetts – 21 December 1999,

Barnstable, Massachusetts The Town of Barnstable ( ) is a town in the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the county seat of Barnstable County. Barnstable is the largest community, both in land area and population, on Cape Cod, and is one of thirteen Massachusetts municipalit ...

) was an American mathematician, specializing in

algebra Algebra () is one of the areas of mathematics, broad areas of mathematics. Roughly speaking, algebra is the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating these symbols in formulas; it is a unifying thread of almost all of mathem ...

, particularly

homological algebra Homological algebra is the branch of mathematics that studies homology in a general algebraic setting. It is a relatively young discipline, whose origins can be traced to investigations in combinatorial topology (a precursor to algebraic topology ...

and

valuation theory In algebra (in particular in algebraic geometry or algebraic number theory), a valuation is a function on a field that provides a measure of size or multiplicity of elements of the field. It generalizes to commutative algebra the notion of size ...

. He completed his Ph.D. at

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 n ...

in 1957; his dissertation, titled ''On torsion free abelian groups'', was written under the supervision of

Emil Artin Emil Artin (; March 3, 1898 – December 20, 1962) was an Austrian mathematician of Armenian descent. Artin was one of the leading mathematicians of the twentieth century. He is best known for his work on algebraic number theory, contributing ...

. Harrison was a faculty member from 1959 to 1963 at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universit ...

and from 1963 to 1993 at the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...

, retiring there as professor emeritus in 1993. He developed a commutative cohomology theory for commutative algebras. Along with his colleague

Marie A. Vitulli Marie A. Vitulli is an American mathematician and professor emerita at the University of Oregon. Mathematics Vitulli's research is in commutative algebra and applications to algebraic geometry. More specific topics in her research include def ...

, he developed a unified valuation theory for rings with zero divisors that generalized both Krull and Archimedean valuations. He was a

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

for the academic year 1963–1964. He supervised 28 doctoral students including Joel Cunningham. Ann Hill Harrison endowed the Harrison Memory Award for outstanding mathematical students at the University of Oregon. He is survived by his son, composer and pianist Michael Harrison, a

for the academic year 2018–2019, and his daughter Jo Ellen Harrison.

Selected publications

* * * with J. M. Irwin, C. L. Peercy, and E. A. Walker: * * * with Stephen U. Chase and Alex F. T. W. Rosenberg: * * with Joel Cunningham: * with Hoyt D. Warner: * * * ** * with Cornelius Greither: * with Bodo Pareigis: * with M. A. Vitulli: * with Frank DeMeyer and Rick Miranda: * with C. Greither:

References

External links

* (1955 photograph of, left to right, Charles W. Misner, Hale Trotter,

Niels Bohr Niels Henrik David Bohr (; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 ...

Hugh Everett III Hugh Everett III (; November 11, 1930 – July 19, 1982) was an American physicist who first proposed the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics, which he termed his "relative state" formulation. In contrast to the then-dominant Cope ...

, and David Harrison) * David K. Harrisons'
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on MathSciNet {{DEFAULTSORT:Harrison, David Kent 1931 births 1999 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians Algebraists Mathematicians from Massachusetts Princeton University alumni University of Oregon faculty