William S. Massey

William Schumacher Massey ( born August 23, 1920 in Granville ( Illinois)) is an American mathematician who deals with algebraic topology.

Massey studied at the University of Chicago with a bachelor 's degree in 1941 and a master's degree in 1942 and in 1948 received his doctorate from Princeton University in Norman Steenrod ( Classification of mappings of an (n 1) - dimensional space into an n -sphere ) where he was from 1948 to 1950 Fellow of the Office of Naval Research. In 1950 he became assistant professor in 1955 and professor at Brown University (where he was in 1954/55 Visiting Associate Professor at Princeton ). 1960 until his retirement in 1991 he was a professor at Yale University, where he chaired from 1968 to 1971 the faculty.

Massey wrote several textbooks on algebraic topology. A cohomology operation, the Massey product is named after him. In 1952 he introduced the method of Exact Couples ( Exact couples ) for the calculation of spectral sequences.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Writings

• Algebraic Topology an introduction, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, Springer Verlag 1977
• A basic course in algebraic topology, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, Springer Verlag 1991
• Singular homology theory, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, Springer Verlag 1980
• Homology and cohomology theory: an approach based on Alexander -Spanier cochains, New York: Dekker, 1978