Morton Brown
American mathematician (1931–2024)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Morton Brown (August 12, 1931 – August 3, 2024[1]) was an American mathematician who specialized in geometric topology.
Morton Brown | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 12, 1931 The Bronx, New York, U.S. |
| Died | August 3, 2024 (aged 92) |
| Title | Professor Emeritus of Mathematics |
| Awards | Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry (1966) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| Thesis | Continuous collections of higher dimensional hereditarily indecomposable continua (1958) |
| R. H. Bing | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Geometric topology |
| Institutions | University of Michigan |
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 under R. H. Bing. From 1960 to 1962 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study. Afterwards he became a professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.[2]
With Barry Mazur in 1965 he won the Oswald Veblen prize[3] for their independent and nearly simultaneous proofs of the generalized Schoenflies hypothesis[4] 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.[citation needed]
In the late 1980s, Brown implemented a large reform to the calculus classes taught at the University of Michigan. His changes later became a model for a national calculus reform movement.[5][2]
In 2012 he became an inaugural fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[6]
