Tracy Yerkes Thomas
| Tracy Y. Thomas | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 8, 1899 Alton, Illinois |
| Died | March 23, 1983 (aged 84) |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Alma mater | Rice University Princeton University |
| Thesis | The Geometry of Paths |
| Doctoral advisor | Oswald Veblen |
Tracy Yerkes Thomas (1899–1983) was an American mathematician.
Thomas received his A.B. in 1921 from Rice University and then his A.M. in 1922 and Ph.D. in 1923 from Princeton University. For the academic year 1923–1924 he was a National Research Fellow in Physics at the University of Chicago and in the academic year 1924–1925 a postdoc in Zürich. For the academic year 1925–1926 he was a National Research Fellow in Mathematics at Harvard University 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. From 1944 to 1969 he was a professor at Indiana University. 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.
Thomas was in 1941 elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
In addition to many books, the best known of which are, The Differential Invariants of Generalized Spaces and Plastic Flow and Fracture in Solids, Professor Thomas wrote 172 research articles in such varied fields as the theory of relativity, plasticity, shock waves, tensors and differential geometry, the extended theory of condition for discontinuities over moving surfaces, and cosmology.
Early in his long and distinguished career, Tracy Thomas created theories of tensor calculus and generalized spaces. His treatise, The Differential Invariants of Generalized Spaces, was published in 1934 and remains a classic of the subject. He then turned his attention to the internal friction of fluids and was able to establish the stabilizing effect of this friction in some cases. He went on to solve a famous open problem concerning the motion of pairs of bodies. There followed a long series of studies of the shock waves that form ahead of object moving at supersonic speed, and to examine the plastic flow of metals under great loading.
Upon his death, he was survived by his wife, Virginia Rowland Thomas, and son, Tracy Alexander Thomas.
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