Jon Peter May (born September 16, 1939, in

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

) is an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

working in the fields of

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 invariant (mathematics), invariants that classification theorem, classify topological spaces up t ...

category theory Category theory is a general theory of mathematical structures and their relations. It was introduced by Samuel Eilenberg and Saunders Mac Lane in the middle of the 20th century in their foundational work on algebraic topology. Category theory ...

homotopy theory In mathematics, homotopy theory is a systematic study of situations in which Map (mathematics), maps can come with homotopy, homotopies between them. It originated as a topic in algebraic topology, but nowadays is learned as an independent discipli ...

, and the foundational aspects of spectra. He is known, in particular, for the

May spectral sequence In mathematics, the May spectral sequence is a spectral sequence, introduced by . It is used for calculating the initial term of the Adams spectral sequence, which is in turn used for calculating the stable homotopy groups of spheres In the mathe ...

and for coining the term

operad In mathematics, an operad is a structure that consists of abstract operations, each one having a fixed finite number of inputs (arguments) and one output, as well as a specification of how to compose these operations. Given an operad O, one define ...

Education and career

May received a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

degree from

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the e ...

in 1960 and a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

degree from

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 1964. His thesis, written under the direction of John Moore, was titled ''The

cohomology In mathematics, specifically in homology theory and algebraic topology, cohomology is a general term for a sequence of abelian groups, usually one associated with a topological space, often defined from a cochain complex. Cohomology can be viewed ...

of restricted

Lie algebras In mathematics, a Lie algebra (pronounced ) is a vector space \mathfrak g together with an operation called the Lie bracket, an alternating bilinear map \mathfrak g \times \mathfrak g \rightarrow \mathfrak g, that satisfies the Jacobi identi ...

and of

Hopf algebra In mathematics, a Hopf algebra, named after Heinz Hopf, is a structure that is simultaneously a ( unital associative) algebra and a (counital coassociative) coalgebra, with these structures' compatibility making it a bialgebra, and that moreover ...

s: Application to the

Steenrod algebra Norman Earl Steenrod (April 22, 1910October 14, 1971) was an American mathematician most widely known for his contributions to the field of algebraic topology. Life He was born in Dayton, Ohio, and educated at Miami University and University of ...

''. From 1964 to 1967, May taught at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

. He has been a faculty member at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

since 1967, and a professor since 1970. The word "

" was created by May as a

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

of "operations" and "

monad Monad may refer to: Philosophy * Monad (philosophy), a term meaning "unit" **Monism, the concept of "one essence" in the metaphysical and theological theory ** Monad (Gnosticism), the most primal aspect of God in Gnosticism * ''Great Monad'', an ...

Awards

In 2012 he became a fellow 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, meetings, ...

.List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
retrieved 2013-02-02. He has advised over 60 doctoral students, including Frederick Cohen,

Ib Madsen Ib Henning Madsen (born 12 April 1942, in Copenhagen)Curriculum vitae
retrieved 3 February 2013. is a Dani ...

, Mona Merling,

Emily Riehl Emily Riehl is an American mathematician who has contributed to higher category theory and homotopy theory. Much of her work, including her PhD thesis, concerns model structures and more recently the foundations of infinity-categories. She is th ...

, Michael Shulman, and

Zhouli Xu Zhouli Xu (; born 1987) is a Chinese mathematician specializing in topology as a Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles, known for computations of homotopy groups of spheres. Education and career Xu earned both ...

References

Notes

: May himself has stated that he was partially inspired by his mother's opera singing when coining the term.

External links

May's homepage at the University of Chicago

Jon Peter May
at the

Mathematics Genealogy Project The Mathematics Genealogy Project (MGP) is a web-based database for the academic genealogy of mathematicians.. it contained information on 300,152 mathematical scientists who contributed to research-level mathematics. For a typical mathematicia ...

20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American topologists University of Chicago faculty Yale University faculty Princeton University alumni Swarthmore College alumni Fellows of the American Mathematical Society 1939 births Living people Mathematicians from New York (state) {{categorytheory-stub