George William Whitehead, Jr. (August 2, 1918 – April 12, 2004) was an American professor of mathematics at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, a member of theUnited States National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is known for his work onalgebraic topology.^[1] He invented theJ-homomorphism, and was among the first to systematically calculate thehomotopy groups of spheres. He is also central to the study ofstable homotopy theory, in particular making concrete the connections betweenspectra andgeneralized homology/cohomology theories.^[2]

Whitehead was born inBloomington, Illinois, and received his Ph.D. in mathematics from theUniversity of Chicago in 1941, under the supervision ofNorman Steenrod.^[1] After teaching atPurdue University,Princeton University, andBrown University, he took a position at MIT in 1949, where he remained until his retirement in 1985. He advised 13 Ph.D. students, includingRobert Aumann,Edgar Brown, Jr., andJohn Coleman Moore, and has over 1,940academic descendants (as of 2025).^[3]

He was a member of theAmerican Academy of Arts & Sciences (elected in 1954)^[4] and the United StatesNational Academy of Sciences (elected in 1972).^[5]

• Whitehead, George William (1978).Elements of homotopy theory. Graduate Texts in Mathematics. Vol. 61 (3rd ed.). New York-Berlin:Springer-Verlag. pp. xxi+744.ISBN 978-0-387-90336-1.MR 0516508. RetrievedSeptember 6, 2011.

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