Biography:William S. Massey

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Short description: American mathematician
William Schumacher Massey
Born(1920-08-20)August 20, 1920
Granville, Illinois, United States
DiedJune 17, 2017(2017-06-17) (aged 96)
Hamden, Connecticut, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Chicago
Princeton University
Known forMassey product
Blakers–Massey theorem
Exact couple
Spouse(s)Ethel H. Massey
Children3
Scientific career
FieldsTopology
InstitutionsBrown University
Yale University
ThesisClassification of mappings of an (n + 1)-dimensional space into an n-sphere (1948)
Doctoral advisorNorman Steenrod
Military career
AllegianceUnited States
Service/branchUnited States Navy
Years of service1942–1945

William Schumacher Massey (August 23, 1920[1] – June 17, 2017) was an American mathematician, known for his work in algebraic topology. The Massey product is named for him. He worked also on the formulation of spectral sequences by means of exact couples, and wrote several textbooks, including A Basic Course in Algebraic Topology (ISBN 0-387-97430-X).

Life

William Massey was born in Granville, Illinois, in 1920, the son of Robert and Alma Massey, and grew up in Peoria. He was an undergraduate student at the University of Chicago. After serving as a meteorologist aboard aircraft carriers in the United States Navy for 4 years during World War II, he received a Ph.D. degree from Princeton University in 1949.[2] His dissertation, entitled Classification of mappings of an [math]\displaystyle{ (n+1) }[/math]-dimensional space into an n-sphere, was written under the direction of Norman Steenrod. He spent two additional years at Princeton as a post-doctoral research assistant.[3] He then taught for ten years on the faculty of Brown University. In 1958 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[4] From 1960 till his retirement he was a professor at Yale University. He died on June 17, 2017, in Hamden, Connecticut. He had 23 PhD students, including Donald Kahn, Larry Smith, and Robert Greenblatt.

Selected works

See also

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References