Robert Charles Thompson (April 21, 1931 – December 10, 1995) was a Canadian-American mathematician, who gained an international reputation for his research on linear algebra and matrix theory.
Biography
Thompson grew up near Vancouver, British Columbia.
He graduated from the
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...
in 1955 with a B.Sc. and in 1957 with an M.Sc. In 1960 he graduated from with a Ph.D. in mathematics from Caltech.
His Ph.D. thesis ''Commutators in the Special and General Linear Groups'' was supervised by
Olga Taussky-Todd
Olga Taussky-Todd (August 30, 1906 – October 7, 1995) was an Austrian and later Czech Americans, Czech-American mathematician. She published more than 300 research papers on algebraic number theory, integral matrices, and Matrix (mathematics), ...
. In 1961 the ''
Transactions of the American Mathematical Society
The ''Transactions of the American Mathematical Society'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of pure and applied mathematics published by the American Mathematical Society. It was established in 1900. As a requirement, all articles must ...
'' published a paper based upon his thesis. In the 1961 paper and in two subsequent 1962 papers, he settled several important open questions.
From 1963 to 1966 Thompson was a faculty member at the University of British Columbia.
[ From 1966 until his death in 1995, he was a professor of mathematics at the ]University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an ...
(UCSB).[ At UCSB, he began a career-long collaboration with ]Marvin Marcus
Marvin David Marcus (July 31, 1927, Albuquerque, New Mexico – February 20, 2016, Santa Barbara, California) was an American mathematician, known as a leading expert on linear and multilinear algebra.
Education and career
From 1944 to 1946, Marv ...
on some research, as well as the founding and development of UCSB's Institute for the Interdisciplinary Application of Algebra and Combinatorics. Thompson and Marcus recruited several prominent mathematicians, including Ky Fan
Ky Fan (樊𰋀, , September 19, 1914 – March 22, 2010) was a Chinese-American mathematician widely regarded as one of the most influential mathematicians from China and one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. Fan's mathematic ...
, Eugene Johnsen, Henryk Minc, and Morris Newman (now known for Newman's conjecture).[
Thompson was the author of four undergraduate textbooks][ and the author or co-author of more than 120 articles.][ He did important research on invariant factors, ]integral matrices In mathematics, an integer matrix is a matrix whose entries are all integers. Examples include binary matrices, the zero matrix, the matrix of ones, the identity matrix, and the adjacency matrices used in graph theory, amongst many others. Integ ...
, principal submatrices, and the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula.[ His research was honored with his appointment as lecturer for the 1988 Johns Hopkins Summer Lecture Series.][
Thompson was one of the founders of the ]International Linear Algebra Society
The International Linear Algebra Society (ILAS) is a professional mathematical society organized to promote research and education in linear algebra, matrix theory and matrix computation. It serves the international community through conferences ...
(ILAS) and of the journal ''Linear and Multilinear Algebra''. He was a contributing editor of ''Linear Algebra and its Applications'' [ (initiated in 1968)]SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications
The ''SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering matrix analysis and its applications. The relevant applications include signal processing, systems and control theory, statistics, Markov chai ...
''.[
Upon his death in 1995, Robert C. Thompson was survived by his wife Natalie. In 1996 he was posthumously awarded the Hans Schneider Prize in Linear Algebra of the ILAS.][
]
Selected publications
Articles
*
* (over 190 citations)
*
*
*
* (over 180 citations)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* (over 270 citations)
*
*
* 1994
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, Robert Charles
1931 births
1995 deaths
20th-century Canadian mathematicians
20th-century American mathematicians
Combinatorialists
Linear algebraists
University of British Columbia alumni
California Institute of Technology alumni
University of California, Santa Barbara faculty