Charles B. Morrey, Jr.

Charles B. Morrey Jr.
Charles B. Morrey Jr. in 1974
Born	(1907-07-23)23 July 1907 Columbus, Ohio
Died	29 April 1984(1984-04-29) (aged 76)
Nationality	United States of America
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Rice Institute Chicago University UC Berkeley
Patrons	Griffith Conrad Evans
Alma mater	PhD Harvard University B.A. and M.A. Ohio State University
Doctoral advisor	George Birkhoff
Doctoral students	Oscar Criner Gregers Krabbe Gregory McAllister Edward Silverman
Known for	Morrey's inequality Morrey-Campanato spaces
Notable awards	National Academy of Sciences membership (1962),American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellowship (1965),Berkeley Citation (1973),

Charles Bradfield Morrey Jr. (23 July 1907 – 29 April 1984) was an American mathematician who made fundamental contributions to the calculus of variations and the theory of partial differential equations.

Charles Bradfield Morrey Jr. was born 23 July 1907 in Columbus, Ohio; his father was a professor of bacteriology at Ohio State University, and his mother was president of a school of music in Columbus, therefore it can be said that his one was a family of academicians. Perhaps from his mother's influence, he had a lifelong love for piano, even if mathematics was his main interest since his childhood. He was at first educated in the public schools of Columbus and, before going to the university, he spent a year at Staunton Military Academy in Staunton, Virginia.

In 1933, during his stay at the Department of Mathematics of the University of California, Berkeley as an instructor, he met Frances Eleonor Moss, who had just started studying for her M.A.: they married in 1937 and had three children. With summers off the family enjoyed traveling: they crossed the United States by car at least 20 times, visiting many natural wonders, and looked forward to the AMS meetings, held each year in August. They usually spent abroad their sabbatical leaves, and doing so they visited nearly every European country, witnessing many changes succeeding during the period from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Morrey graduated from Ohio State University with a B.A. in 1927 and a M.A. in 1928, and then studied at Harvard University under the supervision of George Birkhoff, obtaining a Ph.D. in 1931 with a thesis entitled Invariant functions of Conservative Surface Transformations. After being awarded his Ph.D, he was a National Research Council Fellow at Princeton, at the Rice Institute and finally at the University of Chicago. He became a professor of mathematics at UC Berkeley in 1933, hired by Griffith Conrad Evans, and was a faculty member until his retirement in 1973. In Berkeley, he was early given several administrative duties, for example being the Chairman of the Department of Mathematics during the period 1949–1954, and being the Acting Chairman, the Vice Chairman and the Director of the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics at various times. During the years 1937–1938 and 1954–1955 he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Studies: he was also Visiting Assistant Professor at Northwestern University, Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago and Miller Research Professor at Berkeley. During World War II he was employed as a mathematician at the U.S. Ballistic Research Laboratory in Maryland.