John L. Kelley

John Leroy Kelley (December 6, 1916 in Kansas; † November 26, 1999 in Oakland ( California)) was an American mathematician.

Kelley studied at the University of California, Los Angeles ( UCLA), where in 1936 he received his bachelors degree in 1937 and his master's degree in mathematics. In 1940 he received his doctorate at Gordon Whyburn, a mathematician of the Moore School, via A study of hyper spaces. He then taught at the University of Notre Dame. During World War II he worked on ballistics problems in Aberdeen Proving Ground, the Ballistics Research Center of the U.S. Army, where his later colleagues from Berkeley Anthony Morse and Charles Morrey were. From the work was created in 1953 a ballistics textbook with Edward McShane. 1946 to 1947 he taught at the University of Chicago and later at the University of California, Berkeley, where he remained until his retirement in 1985. In 1950 he was there dismissed with 29 other colleagues, when he refused to make a required by the McCarthy - committees loyalty oath, and taught at Tulane University and the University of Kansas before coming to a judgment of the Supreme Court in California, of these Eid declared inadmissible, was reinstated in 1953. 1957 to 1960 and 1975 to 1980 he was chairman of the mathematics department there. At Berkeley, he was in the 1960s a dedicated opponent of the Vietnam War. Kelley has been a visiting professor in Kanpur in India and at the Cambridge University.

Kelley was concerned with general topology and functional analysis. His book General Topology from 1955 is considered a classic. In the appendix of the book he provides developed by him and Morse variant of the set-theoretic axioms ( Morse -Kelley set theory ) dar.

Kelley was also active in mathematics education and worked as early as 1960 in an NBC program for mathematics education via television with ( Continental Classroom ). As a member of the School Mathematics Study Group, he was involved in the introduction of the New Mathematics ( with set theory as a basis, in the sense of the structure of mathematics according to Bourbaki ) involved in the 1960s in the United States. In 1964 he led a Berkeley the course Mathematics for Teachers and the teaching of it was a book with Richert 1970 show. 1977 to 1978 he was a member of the U.S. Commission for Mathematical Instruction.

Writings

• General topology, Van Nostrand, 1955, ISBN 0-387-90125-6 Springer 1976
• With Isaac Namioka, KTSmith, WFDonoghue junior: Linear Topological Spaces. Van Nostrand, 1963
• With Donald Richert: Elementary Mathematics for Teachers 1970.