Reese Trego Prosser (May 18, 1927 in

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

– June 15, 1996) was an American mathematician. He studied at

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 higher le ...

(A.B., 1949) and

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

under

John L. Kelley John L. Kelley (December 6, 1916, Kansas – November 26, 1999, Berkeley, California) was an American mathematician at the University of California, Berkeley, who worked in general topology and functional analysis. Kelley's 1955 text, ''General ...

(Ph.D. on the thesis ''Structure of

Operator algebra In functional analysis, a branch of mathematics, an operator algebra is an algebra of continuous linear operators on a topological vector space, with the multiplication given by the composition of mappings. The results obtained in the study of ...

s'', 1955), while working as numerical analyst at

Lawrence Radiation Laboratory Lawrence may refer to: Education Colleges and universities * Lawrence Technological University, a university in Southfield, Michigan, United States * Lawrence University, a liberal arts university in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States Preparator ...

(1953–55). He then joined

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

(instructor, 1955–56) and

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(instructor, 1956). He also worked at

Lincoln Laboratory The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and dev ...

(1958–66), among others contributing an early study on routing in

packet switching In telecommunications, packet switching is a method of grouping Data (computing), data into ''network packet, packets'' that are transmitted over a digital Telecommunications network, network. Packets are made of a header (computing), header and ...

computer networks, before becoming associate professor of mathematics at

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

(1966) and professor (1969). He served as a research associate at

(1973) and at

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

(1974 and 1980) while maintaining his professorship at Dartmouth College where he taught until his death in 1996.The Prosser lectures
from

Prosser was also a

cellist The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G2, D3 ...

and

sailing Sailing employs the wind—acting on sails, wingsails or kites—to propel a craft on the surface of the ''water'' (sailing ship, sailboat, raft, windsurfer, or kitesurfer), on ''ice'' (iceboat) or on ''land'' (land yacht) over a chosen cour ...

devotee. The mathematics department at

opened the ''Prosser Memorial Lectures'' in 2002.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Prosser, Reese 20th-century American mathematicians Harvard University alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Scientists from Minneapolis Harvard University staff Dartmouth College faculty University of California, Berkeley faculty 1927 births 1996 deaths MIT Lincoln Laboratory people Mathematicians from Minnesota Duke University people