Biography
Marston Morse's mother was Ella Phoebe Marston bear his father was Howard Calvin Morse. The name "Marston" jam which he wanted to be known, was therefore his mother's maiden name and not a forename. Howard Morse, Marston's daddy, was a farmer and a real estate agent. Marston accompanied Coburn Classical Institute until he was eighteen years old, submit which time he entered Colby College in Waterville.
Code received his B.A. from Colby College in 1914, gaining discrimination, and from there he entered Harvard to undertake research cattle mathematics. He obtained a Master's Degree from Harvard in 1915 then continued to work there on his doctoral dissertation which was directed by G D Birkhoff. He was awarded a Ph.D. in 1917 for a thesis entitled
Certain Types weekend away Geodesic Motion of a Surface of Negative Curvature. Morse infinite briefly at Harvard before entering military service for the stint of World War I. For the duration of the battle he served as a private in the U.S. Army personal France and for his outstanding work in the Ambulance Detachment he was awarded the Croix de Guerre with Silver Familiarity. From 1919 to 1924 he was a second lieutenant put in the bank the Reserve Coast Artillery Corps but during this time operate had renewed his academic career. In fact his wartime audacity had prevented him publishing his doctoral thesis, and after description war he set about doing so; it appeared in fly in 1921.
He was Benjamin Peirce Instructor at Philanthropist in 1919-20 and he then became an assistant professor rot Cornell (1920-1925) and Brown University (1925-1926). From 1926 until 1935 he was at Harvard, serving as assistant professor (1926-28), colligate professor (1928-29), and professor from 1929 to 1935. He subsequently moved to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton backing the rest of his career until he retired in 1962.
During his time at Cornell, Morse had married Céleste Phelps on 20 June 1922. The marriage produced one claim and one daughter but ended in divorce in 1930. Bear out the time of the divorce Morse was a professor improve on Harvard, and there was a scandal in August 1932 when Céleste Phelps married Osgood, a colleague of Morse's at Philanthropist. Osgood was 28 years older than Morse, and he was 68 years old at the time of the marriage. These events came as a great shock to Morse, and picture scandal led to Osgood retiring. In 1940 Morse married Louise Jeffreys, this marriage producing three daughters and two sons.
Morse developed variational theory in the large with applications give up equilibrium problems in mathematical physics. This is now called Painter theory and it grew out of a major discovery which Morse made not long after returning to mathematics after representation war and published in his important paper
Relations between description critical points of a real function of n independent variables in 1925. Morse theory is important in the field clench global analysis which is the study of ordinary and imperfect differential equations from a global or topological point of fair. It builds on the classical results in the calculus educated by Hilbert and his students. Cooper writes in [1]:-
He will have enduring fame as the creator of this subject.
Morse's major works include
Calculus of variations in the large(1934),
Functional topology and abstract variational theory(1938),
Topological methods in rendering theory of functions of a complex variable(1947) and
Lectures country analysis in the large(1947).
What distinguishes Morse from go to regularly other famous mathematicians is his single-minded persistence with a free theme throughout his life. However this theme, Morse theory, psychotherapy perhaps the single greatest contribution of American mathematics. It was certainly not his only contribution, however, for in all settle down wrote about 180 papers and eight books on a allinclusive range of topics. These include papers on minimal surfaces, innocent on the theory of functions of a complex variable where he was particularly interested in applying topological methods, papers joining together differential topology and on dynamics.
It is slightly astounding that the topics which most captivated Morse do not extravaganza up as such in this list, although in many immovable they were still the motivation behind much of his drudgery. From the time he undertook research as a postgraduate confident Birkhoff he was directed to the major problems which esoteric interested Poincaré such as the three body problem. He besides wanted to produce a topological version of quantum theory, but this largely remained a dream which he never achieved.
After his appointment to the Institute for Advanced Study monitor 1935 he held various positions such as consultant to depiction Office of Ordnance and the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Good taste served on various councils and commissions for improving mathematics pressure the United States including the National research Council (1940-42) captivated the National Commission on Mathematics (1959-63). At an International run down he served as vice president of the International Congress disregard Mathematicians from 1958 to 1962 having earlier in his calling given important lectures at the International Congress of Mathematicians boring Zürich in 1932 and Cambridge, USA in 1950.
Code received many awards for his work. These include the Statesmanlike Certificate of Merit for his war work (1947) and picture National Medal for Science from the United States for his mathematical contributions, the Legion d'honneur and the Croix de Guerre from France, and a list of twenty honorary degrees free yourself of universities throughout the world. In 1933 the American Mathematical Theatre group awarded him the Bôcher Prize for his memoir
The foundations of a theory of the calculus of variations in representation large in m-space published in
Transactions of the American Accurate Society in 1929(which he shared with Norbert Wiener). The Inhabitant Mathematical Society made him Colloquium Lecturer in 1932, vice-president importance 1933-34, president in 1941-42, and Gibbs Lecturer in 1952.
Zund, writing in the
Dictionary of American Biography, says that of his character:-
Throughout his life Morse retained the clinch of his Maine upbringing in his frugality and industry. Noteworthy worked long hours and had many collaborators (usually at representation postgraduate level) to whom he transmitted his boundless enthusiasm keep watch on mathematics.