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Marston Morse
Times obituary
Professor J. L. Cooper writes:
The death of Marston Morse on June 22 at the age of 85 has ended a long career, one of the most distinguished in modern mathematics. He was born in March, 1892, in Waterville, Maine, and studied at Colby University and then at Harvard. He taught at Brown University and at Harvard until 1935, when he went to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton as one of the group that made the Institute one of the world's major centres of mathematical research.
In the 1920s, the leading American mathematician, Birkhoff, was at Harvard. His major work concerned problems left by Poincaré, who, because of the impossibility of answering questions of the stability of dynamic systems like the solar system by classical quantitative arguments, had developed qualitative approaches. Marston Morse's work continued that tradition.
He is known above all for his creation of the Morse theory of points at which quantities are stationary. Methods for deciding whether quantities like height, which depend on points in ordinary space, are stationary have been known since before Newton, and methods for deciding this for quantities, such as lengths of varying curves, which denend on more complicated quantities, form the Calculus of Variations, which is quite two centuries old. Many problems in the physical and even the social sciences reduce to questions of whether some property of a system is largest or smallest in a particular state of that system, and very often it is important to be able to say whether or not there are such maximal or minimal states even if one cannot calculate them explicitly. This the classical methods cannot do. The problem of the existence of stable planetary orbits is in this category.
Morse established methods of describing the various types of stationary points that can occur and of setting up relationships that must hold between the numbers of stationary points of each type. Morse's method is the starting point of what is called the Calculus of Variations in the Large, because it considers the aggregate of states of a system as a whole and not just the neighbourhoods of individual states as classical theory did. He will have enduring fame as the creator of this subject. In addition to this, he worked in a number of other parts of mathematics. He wrote several books and numerous research papers which have continued to appear up to the time of his death.
He was active in scientific research work connected with the last war and became a member of the National Science Foundation. He held leading positions in many scientific organizations, including the American Mathematical Society and the International Mathematical Union. The honours bestowed on him are too numerous to list here; they include the Presidential Certificate of Merit and the National Medal for Science from the United States, and from France the Legion d'honneur and the Croix de Guerre, as well as honorary doctorates from universities and memberships of scientific academies in the United States, several countries in both Western and Eastern Europe, and India. His passing will be regretted both by the international community of mathematicians and by other scientists who have gained from his ideas.
Professor J. L. Cooper writes:
The death of Marston Morse on June 22 at the age of 85 has ended a long career, one of the most distinguished in modern mathematics. He was born in March, 1892, in Waterville, Maine, and studied at Colby University and then at Harvard. He taught at Brown University and at Harvard until 1935, when he went to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton as one of the group that made the Institute one of the world's major centres of mathematical research.
In the 1920s, the leading American mathematician, Birkhoff, was at Harvard. His major work concerned problems left by Poincaré, who, because of the impossibility of answering questions of the stability of dynamic systems like the solar system by classical quantitative arguments, had developed qualitative approaches. Marston Morse's work continued that tradition.
He is known above all for his creation of the Morse theory of points at which quantities are stationary. Methods for deciding whether quantities like height, which depend on points in ordinary space, are stationary have been known since before Newton, and methods for deciding this for quantities, such as lengths of varying curves, which denend on more complicated quantities, form the Calculus of Variations, which is quite two centuries old. Many problems in the physical and even the social sciences reduce to questions of whether some property of a system is largest or smallest in a particular state of that system, and very often it is important to be able to say whether or not there are such maximal or minimal states even if one cannot calculate them explicitly. This the classical methods cannot do. The problem of the existence of stable planetary orbits is in this category.
Morse established methods of describing the various types of stationary points that can occur and of setting up relationships that must hold between the numbers of stationary points of each type. Morse's method is the starting point of what is called the Calculus of Variations in the Large, because it considers the aggregate of states of a system as a whole and not just the neighbourhoods of individual states as classical theory did. He will have enduring fame as the creator of this subject. In addition to this, he worked in a number of other parts of mathematics. He wrote several books and numerous research papers which have continued to appear up to the time of his death.
He was active in scientific research work connected with the last war and became a member of the National Science Foundation. He held leading positions in many scientific organizations, including the American Mathematical Society and the International Mathematical Union. The honours bestowed on him are too numerous to list here; they include the Presidential Certificate of Merit and the National Medal for Science from the United States, and from France the Legion d'honneur and the Croix de Guerre, as well as honorary doctorates from universities and memberships of scientific academies in the United States, several countries in both Western and Eastern Europe, and India. His passing will be regretted both by the international community of mathematicians and by other scientists who have gained from his ideas.
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