Edwin Spanier (nonfiction)

Edwin Spanier (1986).

Edwin Henry Spanier (August 8, 1921 – October 11, 1996) was an American mathematician at the University of California at Berkeley, working in algebraic topology. He co-invented Spanier–Whitehead duality and Alexander–Spanier cohomology, and wrote what was for a long time the standard textbook on algebraic topology (Spanier 1981).

Spanier attended the University of Minnesota, graduating in 1941. During World War II, he served in the United States Army Signal Corps. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan in 1947 for the thesis Cohomology Theory for General Spaces written under the direction of Norman Steenrod. After spending a year as a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1948 he was appointed to the faculty of the University of Chicago, and then a professor at UC Berkeley in 1959. He had 17 doctoral students, including Morris Hirsch and Elon Lages Lima.

Publications

• Spanier, Edwin H. (1981) [first published in 1966], Algebraic topology. Corrected reprint, New York-Berlin: Springer-Verlag, pp. xvi+528, ISBN 0-387-90646-0, MR 0666554

References

• Edwin Spanier at the Mathematics Genealogy Project Retrieved on 2008-01-17
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Edwin Spanier", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews. Retrieved on 2008-01-17
• Obituary, at the Notices of the American Mathematical Society
• Photos, at the Mathematical Research Institute of Oberwolfach

• Algebraic topology (nonfiction) - branch of mathematics that uses tools from abstract algebra to study topological spaces. The basic goal is to find algebraic invariants that classify topological spaces up to homeomorphism, though usually most classify up to homotopy equivalence.
• Morris Hirsch (nonfiction) - mathematician who contributes to differential equations and dynamical systems. (Born June 28, 1933)
• Elon Lages Lima (nonfiction) - mathematician whose research concerned differential topology, algebraic topology, and differential geometry. (July 9, 1929 – May 7, 2017.)
• Norman Steenrod (nonfiction) - mathematician most widely known for his contributions to the field of algebraic topology. (April 22, 1910 – October 14, 1971.)