Robert Charles Thompson (April 21, 1931,

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749,6 ...

Manitoba Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...

– December 10, 1995,

Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara ( es, Santa Bárbara, meaning "Saint Barbara") is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coas ...

) was a Canadian-American mathematician, who gained an international reputation for his research on linear algebra and matrix theory.

Biography

Thompson grew up near Vancouver, British Columbia. He graduated from the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

in 1955 with a B.Sc. and in 1957 with an M.Sc. In 1960 he graduated from with a Ph.D. in mathematics from Caltech. His Ph.D. thesis ''Commutators in the Special and General Linear Groups'' was supervised by

Olga Taussky-Todd Olga Taussky-Todd (August 30, 1906, Olomouc, Austria-Hungary (present-day Olomouc, Czech Republic) – October 7, 1995, Pasadena, California) was an Austrian and later Czech-American mathematician. She published more than 300 research papers on a ...

. In 1961 the ''

Transactions of the American Mathematical Society The ''Transactions of the American Mathematical Society'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of mathematics published by the American Mathematical Society. It was established in 1900. As a requirement, all articles must be more than 15 p ...

'' published a paper based upon his thesis. In the 1961 paper and in two subsequent 1962 papers, he settled several important open questions. From 1963 to 1966 Thompson was a faculty member at the University of British Columbia. From 1966 until his death in 1995, he was a professor of mathematics at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

(UCSB). At UCSB, he began a career-long collaboration with Marvin Marcus on some research, as well as the founding and development of UCSB's Institute for the Interdisciplinary Application of Algebra and Combinatorics. Thompson and Marcus recruited several prominent mathematicians, including

Ky Fan Ky Fan (樊𰋀, , September 19, 1914 – March 22, 2010) was a Chinese-born American mathematician. He was a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Biography Fan was born in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejian ...

, Eugene Johnsen, Henryk Minc, and Morris Newman (now known for

Newman's conjecture In mathematics, specifically in number theory, Newman's conjecture is a conjecture about the behavior of the Partition function (number theory), partition function modulo any integer. Specifically, it states that for any integers and such that ...

). UCSB's mathematics department gained fame for promoting research in linear algebra and matrix theory, influencing matrix research in Israel, Hong Kong, Portugal, Spain, and elsewhere. Thompson was the author of four undergraduate textbooks and the author or co-author of more than 120 articles. He did important research on invariant factors,

integral matrices In mathematics, an integer matrix is a matrix whose entries are all integers. Examples include binary matrices, the zero matrix, the matrix of ones, the identity matrix, and the adjacency matrices used in graph theory, amongst many others. Int ...

, principal submatrices, and the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula. His research was honored with his appointment as lecturer for the 1988 Johns Hopkins Summer Lecture Series. Thompson was one of the founders of the

International Linear Algebra Society The International Linear Algebra Society (ILAS) is a professional mathematical society organized to promote research and education in linear algebra, matrix theory and matrix computation. It serves the international community through conferences, ...

(ILAS) and of the journal ''Linear and Multilinear Algebra''. He was a contributing editor of ''Linear Algebra and its Applications'' (initiated in 1968) and an editor of the ''

SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications The ''SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications'' (until 1989: ''SIAM Journal on Algebraic and Discrete Methods'') is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering matrix analysis and its applications. The relevant applications include signal ...

''. Upon his death in 1995, Robert C. Thompson was survived by his wife Natalie. In 1996 he was posthumously awarded the

Hans Schneider Prize in Linear Algebra The Hans Schneider Prize in Linear Algebra is awarded every three years by the International Linear Algebra Society. It recognizes research, contributions, and achievements at the highest level of linear algebra and was first awarded in 1993. It may ...

of the ILAS.

Selected publications

Articles

* * (over 190 citations) * * * * (over 180 citations) * * * * * * * * * * * (over 270 citations) * * * 1994 *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, Robert Charles 1931 births 1995 deaths 20th-century Canadian mathematicians 20th-century American mathematicians Combinatorialists Linear algebraists University of British Columbia alumni California Institute of Technology alumni University of California, Santa Barbara faculty