Norman Steenrod

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Norman Steenrod
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Born (1910-04-22)April 22, 1910
Dayton, Ohio
Died Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist.
Princeton, New Jersey
Nationality American
Fields Mathematics
Institutions University of Chicago
University of Michigan
Princeton University
Alma mater University of Michigan
Harvard University
Princeton University
Doctoral advisor Solomon Lefschetz
Doctoral students Peter Freyd
Wu-Chung Hsiang
Jerome Levine
William Massey
Edwin Spanier
George Whitehead
Known for Eilenberg–Steenrod axioms

Norman Earl Steenrod (April 22, 1910 – October 14, 1971) was a mathematician most widely known for his contributions to the field of algebraic topology.[1]

Life

He was born in Dayton, Ohio, and educated at Miami University and University of Michigan (A.B. 1932). After receiving a master's degree from Harvard University in 1934, he enrolled at Princeton University. He completed his Ph.D. under the direction of Solomon Lefschetz, with a thesis titled Universal homology groups. He held positions at the University of Chicago from 1939 to 1942, and the University of Michigan from 1942 to 1947. He moved to Princeton University in 1947, and remained on the Faculty there for the rest of his career. He died in Princeton.

Work

Thanks to Lefschetz and others, the cup product structure of cohomology was understood by the early 1940s. Steenrod was able to define operations from one cohomology group to another (the so-called Steenrod squares) that generalized the cup product. The additional structure made cohomology a finer invariant. The Steenrod cohomology operations form a (non-commutative) algebra under composition, known as the Steenrod algebra.

His book The Topology of Fibre Bundles[2] is a standard reference. In collaboration with Samuel Eilenberg, he was a founder of the axiomatic approach to homology theory. See Eilenberg–Steenrod axioms.

See also

Publications

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References

  1. Steenrod, Norman, et al. First Concepts of Topology. The Mathematical Association of America New Mathematical Library. Miami: 1966.
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External links