Donald C. Spencer
Donald Clayton Spencer ( born April 25, 1912 in Boulder, Colorado, † December 23, 2001 in Scottsdale, Arizona ) was an American mathematician who (including partial differential equations) worked mainly in algebraic geometry and analysis.
Life and work
Donald Spencer studied at the University of Colorado (Bachelor 1934) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Bachelor in Aviation Technology 1936) and in 1939 received his doctorate from Cambridge University in England with John Edensor Littlewood and Godfrey Harold Hardy ( On the Hardy - Littlewood problem of Diophantine Approximations and Its Generalizations ). After that, he was from 1939 to 1942 at MIT and then at Stanford University. 1950 to 1963 he was at Princeton University, from 1963 to 1968 again at Stanford and then again until 1978 Professor at Princeton.
From the 1940s, worked with Albert C. Schaeffer about the Bieberbach problem (coefficients in the power series development of simple functions). In the 1950s he developed with Kunihiko Kodaira Kodaira - Spencer in the Princeton - theory (deformation theory of complex structures ) for which he is best known.
In 1948, he received the Bôcher Memorial Prize with ACSchaeffer. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1989 he received the National Medal of Science. In 1970 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Nice ( Over Determined operators: some remarks on symbols ).
His doctoral include Phillip Griffiths and Pierre Conner.
Writings
- Selecta, 3 volumes, World Scientific, 1985.
- With M. Schiffer: Functionals of Finite Riemann Surfaces. Princeton 1954.
- With Nickerson, Norman Steenrod: Advanced Calculus. Van Nostrand 1959.
- With A. Kumpera: Lie equations. Vol.1, Annals of Mathematical Studies, Princeton 1972.