Veblen

Oswald Veblen

Born: 24 June 1880 in Decorah, Iowa, USA
Died: 10 Aug 1960 in Brooklyn, Maine, USA

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Veblen made important contributions to projective and differential geometry, and topology.

Veblen taught mathematics at Princeton University from 1905 to 1932. In 1932 he helped organise the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and became a professor there in 1932.

His interest in the foundations of geometry led to his work on the axiom systems of projective geometry. Together with John Wesley Young he published Projective geometry (1910-18). Veblen's Analysis Situs (1922) provided the first systematic coverage of the basic ideas of topology and contributed to the development of modern topology.

Soon after Einstein's theory of general relativity appeared Veblen turned his attention to differential geometry. This work led to important applications in relativity theory, and much of his work also found application in atomic physics. His work The invariants of quadratic differential forms (1927) is a systematic treatment of Riemann geometry while his work, written jointly with his student Henry Whitehead, The foundations of differential geometry (1933) gives the first definition of a differentiable manifold.

In Projective relativity theory (1933) he gave a new treatment of spinors, used to represent electron spin.

Veblen played a key role in the setting up of the mathematics department at the Institute for Advance Study at Princeton.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Tell me about Veblen's work on the four colour theorem and on mathematical games and recreations

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. S MacLane, Oswald Veblen, Biographical Memoirs. National Academy of Sciences 37 (1964), 325-341.
  4. Obituary, Yearbook of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Session 1960-61 (1962). 
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JOC/EFR February 1996