Morton Brown (August 12, 1931 – August 3, 2024) was an American mathematician who specialized in
geometric topology
In mathematics, geometric topology is the study of manifolds and Map (mathematics)#Maps as functions, maps between them, particularly embeddings of one manifold into another.
History
Geometric topology as an area distinct from algebraic topo ...
.
Life and career
Brown was born in New York City on August 12, 1931. In 1958 Brown earned his Ph.D. from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison
A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...
under
R. H. Bing. From 1960 to 1962 he was at the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...
. Afterwards he became a professor at the
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
With
Barry Mazur in 1965 he won the
Oswald Veblen prize for their independent and nearly simultaneous proofs of the
generalized Schoenflies hypothesis in geometric topology. Brown's short proof was elementary and fully general. Mazur's proof was also elementary, but it used a special assumption which was removed via later work of Morse.
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 2012-11-10.
References
External links
*
1931 births
2024 deaths
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars
University of Michigan faculty
University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni
American topologists
Mathematicians from New York (state)
Scientists from New York City
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