George Seligman
American mathematician
George Benham Seligman (April 30, 1927 – April 25, 2024) was an American mathematician who worked on Lie algebras, especially semi-simple Lie algebras.
Biography
Seligman was born on April 30, 1927. He received his bachelor's degree in 1950 from the University of Rochester and his PhD in 1954 from Yale University under Nathan Jacobson with thesis Lie algebras of prime characteristic. After he received his PhD he was a Henry Burchard Fine Instructor at Princeton University from 1954–1956. In 1956 he became an instructor and from 1965 a full professor at Yale, where he was chair of the mathematics department from 1974 to 1977.
For the academic year 1958/59 he was a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Münster. His doctoral students include James E. Humphreys, Brian J Parshall, and Daniel K. Nakano.
Seligman married Irene Schwieder in 1959. The couple had two daughters. He died in Hamden, Connecticut, on April 25, 2024, at the age of 96.
“George Seligman” enters the record as american mathematician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what George, Seligman and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“George Seligman” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, George, Seligman and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15811844. The first chronological checks are 1927, 2024, 1950 and 1954.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “George Seligman”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow George Seligman primary sources, George Seligman archive and George research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “George Seligman”?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “George Seligman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.