Marston Morse: Difference between revisions

Harold Calvin Marston Morse (March 24, 1892 – June 22, 1977) was an American mathematician best known for his work on the calculus of variations in the large, a subject where he introduced the technique of differential topology now known as Morse theory. The Morse–Palais lemma, one of the key results in Morse theory, is named after him, as is the Thue–Morse sequence, an infinite binary sequence with many applications. In 1933 he was awarded the Bôcher Memorial Prize for his work in mathematical analysis.

Biography

He was born in

He taught at Harvard, Brown, and Cornell Universities before accepting a position in 1935 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he remained until his retirement in 1962.

He spent most of his career on a single subject, now known as Morse theory, a branch of differential topology. Morse theory is a very important subject in modern mathematical physics, such as string theory.

Marston Morse should not be confused with

Selected publications

Articles

• Morse, Harold Marston (1924). "A fundamental class of geodesics on any closed surface of genus greater than one". Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 26 (1): 25–60.
  MR 1501263
  .
• Morse, Marston (1928). "The foundations of a theory in the calculus of variations in the large". Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 30 (2): 213–274.
  MR 1501428
  .
• Morse, M. (1928). "Singular points of vector fields under general boundary conditions". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 14 (5): 428–430.
  PMID 16577120
  .
• Morse, Marston (1929). "The critical points of functions and the calculus of variations in the large". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 35 (1): 38–54.
  MR 1561686
  .
• "The foundations of the calculus of variations in the large in m-space (first paper)". Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 31 (3): 379–404. 1929.
  MR 1501489
  .
• Morse, M. (1929). "Closed extremals". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 15 (11): 856–859.
  PMID 16577255
  .
• "The foundations of a theory of the calculus of variations in the large in m-space (second paper)". Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 32 (4): 599–631. 1930.
  MR 1501555
  .
• Morse, Marston (1931). "The critical points of a function of n variables". Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 33 (1): 72–91.
  PMID 16577308
  .
• Morse, Marston (1935). "Sufficient conditions in the problem of Lagrange without assumptions of normalcy". Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 37 (1): 147–160.
  MR 1501780
  .
• with Walter Leighton: Morse, Marston; Leighton, Walter (1936). "Singular quadratic functions". Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 40 (2): 252–288.
  MR 1501873
  .
• with
  MR 0006479
  .
• Morse, M. (1952). "Homology relations on regular orientable manifolds". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 38 (3): 247–258.
  PMID 16589087
  .

• Calculus of variations in the large, American Mathematical Society, 1934[1]
• Topological methods in the theory of functions of a complex variable, Princeton University Press, 1947^[2]
• Lectures on analysis in the large, 1947
• Symbolic dynamics, Mimeographed notes by R. Oldenberger. Princeton, NJ: Institute for Advanced Study. 1966.
• with Stewart Cairns: Critical point theory in global analysis and differential topology, Academic Press, 1969
• Variational analysis: critical extremals and Sturmian extensions, Wiley, 1973; 2nd edn. Dover, 2007{{citation}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• Global variational analysis: Weierstrass integrals on a Riemannian manifold, Princeton University Press, 1976^[3]
• Morse, Marston (1981),
  MR 0635124
• Morse, Marston (1987), Montgomery, Deane;
  MR 0889255

• "Pits, Peaks, and Passes: A Lecture on Critical Point Theory", Mathematical Association of America Lecture Films, 1966

Notes

Biographical references

• Pitcher, Everett (1994), "H. Marston Morse" (PDF), in
  ISBN 978-0-309-07359-2
  .

References

• Zbl 0469.01012
  .
• Nadis, Steve;
  ISBN 978-0-674-72655-0
  ).

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Marston Morse.

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Marston Morse", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
• Marston Morse at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• History of Substitution Systems