Robert Clarke James (1918 – September 25, 2004)
was an
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the " United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, ...
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
who worked 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 ...
.
Biography
James attended
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...
as an undergraduate, where his father was a professor. As a devout
Quaker
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...
, he was a
conscientious objector
A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to obje ...
during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
.
He obtained his PhD at
Caltech
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 ...
in 1946 under the direction of Aristotle Demetrius Michal. He spent a year as a Benjamin Peirce Fellow at
Harvard and joined the faculty at
UC Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...
. In 1950, during the
loyalty oath controversy, James refused to sign the oath and moved to
Haverford College. Later he was the founding math department chair both at
Harvey Mudd College
Harvey Mudd College (HMC) is a private college in Claremont, California, focused on science and engineering. It is part of the Claremont Colleges, which share adjoining campus grounds and resources. The college enrolls 902 undergraduate students ...
and at the
Claremont Graduate University
The Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is a private, all-graduate research university in Claremont, California. Founded in 1925, CGU is a member of the Claremont Colleges which includes five undergraduate (Pomona College, Claremont McKenna C ...
.
James constructed a number of counterexamples in the theory of
Banach space
In mathematics, more specifically in functional analysis, a Banach space (pronounced ) is a complete normed vector space. Thus, a Banach space is a vector space with a metric that allows the computation of vector length and distance between ve ...
s, including
James' space In the area of mathematics known as functional analysis, James' space is an important example in the theory of Banach spaces and commonly serves as useful counterexample to general statements concerning the structure of general Banach spaces. The s ...
and
James' tree space. He also characterized
reflexivity for Banach spaces with an
unconditional Schauder basis and proved an
eponymous compactness criterion.
With his father (a professor at
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...
and long-time editor of
Mathematics Magazine
''Mathematics Magazine'' is a refereed bimonthly publication of the Mathematical Association of America. Its intended audience is teachers of collegiate mathematics, especially at the junior/senior level, and their students. It is explicitly a ...
) he published a mathematical dictionary which went through several editions.
James was made a
in 1978.
Selected works
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*
*
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:James, Robert C.
Functional analysts
20th-century American mathematicians
1918 births
2004 deaths
Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
University of California, Los Angeles alumni
California Institute of Technology alumni
Harvey Mudd College faculty
20th-century Quakers
American Quakers