Paul Kelly (mathematician)
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Paul Joseph Kelly (June 26, 1915 – July 15, 1995) was an American mathematician who worked in geometry and graph theory.[1][2]
Kelly was born in Riverside, California. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles before moving to the University of Wisconsin–Madison for doctoral studies; he earned his Ph.D. in 1942 with a dissertation concerning geometric transformations under the supervision of Stanislaw Ulam.[1][2][3]
He spent the rest of the war years serving in the United States Air Force as a First Lieutenant, before returning to academia with a teaching appointment at the University of Southern California in 1946. He moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1949, and was chair there from 1957 to 1962.[1][2] At UCSB, his students included Brian Alspach (through whom he has nearly 30 academic descendants) and Phyllis Chinn.[3] He retired in 1982.[1][2]
