Tracy Yerkes Thomas (1899–1983) was an American mathematician.

Biography

Thomas received his A.B. in 1921 from

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...

and then his A.M. in 1922 and Ph.D. in 1923 from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

. For the academic year 1923–1924 he was a National Research Fellow in Physics at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

and in the academic year 1924–1925 a postdoc in

Zürich Zürich () is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. As of January 2020, the municipality has 43 ...

. For the academic year 1925–1926 he was a National Research Fellow in Mathematics 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 ...

and then Princeton University, where he was on the mathematics faculty from 1926 to 1938. From 1938 to 1944 he was a professor at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

. From 1944 to 1969 he was a professor at

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...

. In 1952, he was one of the founders of the ''Journal of Rational Mechanics and Analysis'', which is now known as the ''

Indiana University Mathematics Journal The ''Indiana University Mathematics Journal'' is a journal of mathematics published by Indiana University. Its first volume was published in 1952, under the name ''Journal of Rational Mechanics and Analysis'' and edited by Zachery D. Paden and ...

''. Thomas was in 1941 elected a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

. Upon his death, he was survived by his wife, Virginia Rowland Thomas, and son, Tracy Alexander Thomas.

Selected publications

Articles

The Einstein Equations of the Gravitational Field for an Arbitrary Distribution of Matter
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 9, no. 8 (1923): 275–278. *with Oswald Veblen: The geometry of paths. Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 25 (1923) 551–608. *with Oswald Veblen: Extensions of relative tensors. Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 26 (1924) 373–377. *Note on the projective geometry of paths. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 31 (1925) 318–322.
On the projective and equi-projective geometries of paths
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 11, no. 4 (1925): 199–203.
On conformal geometry
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 12, no. 5 (1926): 352–359. *with Jack Levine: On a class of existence theorems in differential geometry. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 40 (1934) 721–728. *Algebraic characterizations in complex differential geometry. Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 38 (1935) 501–514. *On the metric representations of affinely connected spaces. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 42 (1936) 77–78. *On the singular point locus in the theory of fields of parallel vectors. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 45 (1939) 436–441. *Imbedding theorems in differential geometry. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 45 (1939) Part 1:841–850.
On the uniform convergence of the solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 29, no. 8 (1943): 243–246. *Algebraic determination of the second fundamental form of a surface by its mean curvature. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 51 (1945) Part 1:390–399.
The fundamental theorem on quadratic first integrals
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 32, no. 1 (1946): 10–15.
Combined elastic and Prandtl-Reuss stress-strain relations
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 41, no. 10 (1955): 720–726.
On the stress-strain relations for cubic crystals
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 55, no. 2 (1966): 235–239.

Books

* * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, Tracy Yerkes 20th-century American mathematicians Rice University alumni Princeton University alumni 1899 births 1983 deaths Princeton University faculty University of California, Los Angeles faculty Indiana University faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences