J. H. C. Whitehead | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | John Henry Constantine Whitehead (1904-11-11)11 November 1904 |
| Died | 8 May 1960(1960-05-08) (aged 55) |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Oxford University Princeton University |
| Known for | Collapse CW complex Crossed module Simple homotopy Whitehead conjecture Whitehead group Whitehead link Whitehead manifold Whitehead problem Whitehead product Whitehead theorem Whitehead torsion Whitehead tower Whitehead's algorithm Whitehead's lemma Spanier–Whitehead duality |
| Awards | Senior Berwick Prize(1948) Fellow of the Royal Society[1] |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Oxford University |
| Doctoral advisor | Oswald Veblen |
| Doctoral students | |
John Henry Constantine WhiteheadFRS[1] (11 November 1904 – 8 May 1960), known as "Henry", was a British mathematician and was one of the founders ofhomotopy theory. He was born inChennai (then known as Madras), inIndia, and died inPrinceton, New Jersey, in 1960.
J. H. C. (Henry) Whitehead was the son of the Right Rev.Henry Whitehead,Bishop of Madras, who had studied mathematics atOxford, and was the nephew ofAlfred North Whitehead and Isobel Duncan. He was brought up inOxford, went toEton and read mathematics atBalliol College,Oxford. After a year working as a stockbroker, at Buckmaster & Moore, he started a PhD in 1929 atPrinceton University. His thesis, titledThe representation ofprojective spaces, was written under the direction ofOswald Veblen in 1930. While inPrinceton, he also worked withSolomon Lefschetz.
He became a fellow of Balliol in 1933. In 1934 he married the concert pianist Barbara Smyth, great-great-granddaughter ofElizabeth Fry and a cousin ofPeter Pears; they had two sons. In 1936, he co-foundedThe Invariant Society, the student mathematics society at Oxford.[2]
During the Second World War he worked onoperations research for submarine warfare. Later, he joined the codebreakers atBletchley Park, and by 1945 was one of some fifteen mathematicians working in the "Newmanry", a section headed byMax Newman and responsible for breaking a Germanteleprinter cipher using machine methods.[3] Those methods included theColossus machines, early digital electronic computers.[3]
From 1947 to 1960 he was theWaynflete Professor of Pure Mathematics atMagdalen College, Oxford.
He became president of theLondon Mathematical Society (LMS) in 1953, a post he held until 1955.[4] The LMS established two prizes in memory of Whitehead. The first is the annually awarded, to multiple recipients,Whitehead Prize; the second a biennially awardedSenior Whitehead Prize.[5]
Joseph J. Rotman, in his book on algebraic topology, as a tribute to Whitehead's intellect, says, "There is a canard that every textbook of algebraic topology either ends with the definition of the Klein bottle or is a personal communication to J. H. C. Whitehead."[6]
Whitehead died from an asymptomatic heart attack during a visit to Princeton University in May 1960.[7]
In the late 1950s, Whitehead had approachedRobert Maxwell, then chairman ofPergamon Press, to start a new journal,Topology, however Whitehead died before its first edition appeared in 1962.
Whitehead's definition ofCW complexes gave a setting for homotopy theory that became standard. He introduced the idea ofsimple homotopy theory, which was later much developed in connection withalgebraic K-theory. TheWhitehead product is an operation in homotopy theory. TheWhitehead problem onabelian groups was solved (as an independence proof) bySaharon Shelah.[8] His involvement with topology and thePoincaré conjecture led to the creation of theWhitehead manifold. The definition ofcrossed modules is due to him. He also made important contributions indifferential topology, particularly ontriangulations and their associatedsmooth structures.
See also:Algebraic homotopy
