Hassler Whitney

Hassler Whitney
Whitney in April 1973
Born	(1907-03-23)March 23, 1907 New York City
Died	May 10, 1989(1989-05-10) (aged 82) Princeton, New Jersey
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Harvard University Institute for Advanced Study Princeton University National Science Foundation National Defense Research Committee
Alma mater	Yale University
Doctoral advisor	George David Birkhoff
Doctoral students	R. Eliiot Chamberlin James Eells Wilfred Kaplan Paul Olum Herbert Robbins
Known for	Algebraic topology Differential topology Graph theory Geometric measure theory Singularity theory
Notable awards	National Medal of Science (1976) Wolf Prize (1983) Leroy P. Steele Prize (1985)

Hassler Whitney (March 23, 1907 – May 10, 1989) was an American mathematician. He was one of the founders of singularity theory, and did foundational work in manifolds, embeddings, immersions, characteristic classes, and geometric integration theory.

Hassler Whitney was born on March 23, 1907, in New York City, where his father Edward Baldwin Whitney was the First District New York Supreme Court judge. His mother, Josepha (Newcomb) Whitney, was an artist and active in politics. His paternal grandfather was William Dwight Whitney, professor of Ancient Languages at Yale University, linguist, and Sanskrit scholar. Whitney was the great grandson of Connecticut Governor and US Senator Roger Sherman Baldwin, and the great-great-grandson of American founding father Roger Sherman. His maternal grandparents were astronomer and mathematician Simon Newcomb (1835-1909), a Steeves descendant, and Mary Hassler Newcomb, granddaughter of the first superintendent of the Coast Survey Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler. His great uncle Josiah Whitney was the first to survey Mount Whitney.

He married three times: his first wife was Margaret R. Howell, married on the 30 May 1930. They had three children, James Newcomb, Carol and Marian. After his first divorce, on January 16, 1955 he married Mary Barnett Garfield. He and Mary had two daughters, Sarah Newcomb and Emily Baldwin. Finally, Whitney divorced his second wife and married Barbara Floyd Osterman on 8 February 1986.