John Williams Calkin (11 October 1909, New Rochelle, New York – 5 August 1964,

Westhampton, New York Westhampton is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in Suffolk County, New York, United States. The population was 3,079 at the 2010 census. Westhampton is in the Town of Southampton. Geography Westhampton is located at (40.822894, -72.66 ...

) was an American mathematician, specializing in

functional analysis Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of vector spaces endowed with some kind of limit-related structure (e.g. inner product, norm, topology, etc.) and the linear functions defined o ...

. The

Calkin algebra In functional analysis, the Calkin algebra, named after John Williams Calkin, is the quotient of ''B''(''H''), the ring of bounded linear operators on a separable infinite-dimensional Hilbert space ''H'', by the ideal ''K''(''H'') of compact oper ...

is named after him.

Biography

Calkin received his bachelor's degree from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 1933 and his master's degree in 1934 and Ph.D. in 1937 from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. His doctoral dissertation '' Applications of the Theory of Hilbert Space to Partial Differential Equations; the Self-Adjoint Transformations in Hilbert Space Associated with a Formal Partial Differential Operator of the Second Order and Elliptic Type '') was supervised by

Marshall H. Stone Marshall Harvey Stone (April 8, 1903 – January 9, 1989) was an American mathematician who contributed to real analysis, functional analysis, topology and the study of Boolean algebras. Biography Stone was the son of Harlan Fiske Stone, who wa ...

. In the dissertation, Calkin acknowledges useful discussions with

John von Neumann John von Neumann (; hu, Neumann János Lajos, ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as having perhaps the widest cove ...

. At the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent schola ...

, Calkin was a research assistant for the academic year 1937–1938 (working with

Oswald Veblen Oswald Veblen (June 24, 1880 – August 10, 1960) was an American mathematician, geometer and topologist, whose work found application in atomic physics and the theory of relativity. He proved the Jordan curve theorem in 1905; while this was lon ...

and von Neumann) and in the first eight months of 1942. From 1938 to 1942 he was an assistant professor at the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, m ...

and then at Chicago's

Illinois Institute of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has prog ...

. During the late 1930s and early 1940s he wrote several important papers on operator theory and its applications to partial differential equations. From Los Alamos, Calkin went in 1946 as a

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the a ...

to the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

. He later taught at the

Rice Institute The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is an international agricultural research and training organization with its headquarters in Los Baños, Laguna, in the Philippines, and offices in seventeen countries. IRRI is known for its work ...

(renamed Rice University in 1960), before he returned in 1949 to

Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in ...

as a member of the theoretical division. There he worked on the development of the H-bomb. Upon his death he was survived by his widow, Emilienne Calkin (1922–2000), and his son, Brant Calkin (born 1934), from a previous marriage (to Eileen Calkin). Brant Calkin is an environmental activist in New Mexico and Utah and former president of the Sierra Club.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Calkin, John Williams 20th-century American mathematicians Columbia University alumni Harvard University alumni Manhattan Project people Scientists from New Rochelle, New York 1909 births 1964 deaths Mathematicians from New York (state) University of New Hampshire faculty Illinois Institute of Technology faculty New York University faculty Brookhaven National Laboratory staff Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel Rice University faculty Operator theorists

Biography

Selected publications

See also

References