Samuel Eilenberg
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Samuel Eilenberg (September 30, 1913—January 30, 1998) was a Polish mathematician. He was born in Warsaw, Russian Empire (now Poland) and died in New York, USA where he had spent much of his career as a professor at Columbia University.
He earned his Ph.D. from Warsaw University in 1936. His thesis advisor was Karol Borsuk. His main interest was algebraic topology. He worked on the axiomatic treatment of homology theory with Norman Steenrod (whose names the Eilenberg-Steenrod axioms bear), and on homological algebra with Saunders Mac Lane. He took part in the Bourbaki group meetings, and, with Henri Cartan, wrote the 1956 book Homological Algebra, which became a classic.
Later in life he worked mainly in pure category theory, being one of the founders of the field. The Eilenberg telescope is a surprising construction, applying the telescoping cancellation idea to projective modules.
Eilenberg also wrote an important book on automata theory. The X-machine, a form of automaton, was introduced by Eilenberg in 1974.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- S.Eilenberg. Automata, Languages and Machines. ISBN 0-12-234001-9
[edit] External links
- Samuel Eilenberg at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- O'Connor, John J., and Edmund F. Robertson. "Samuel Eilenberg". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.
- Eilenberg's biography − from the National Academies Press, by Hyman Bass, Henri Cartan, Peter Freyd, Alex Heller and Saunders Mac Lane.
Categories: 1913 births | 1998 deaths | Category theorists | Topologists | 20th century mathematicians | American mathematicians | Jewish mathematicians | Polish mathematicians | People from Warsaw | Polish Jews | Polish-Americans | Warsaw University alumni | Columbia University faculty | Wolf Prize recipients | Erdős number 2
