John N. Mather
American mathematician (1942–2017)
John Norman Mather (June 9, 1942 – January 28, 2017) was a mathematician at Princeton University known for his work on singularity theory and Hamiltonian dynamics.
Biography
He was descended from Atherton Mather (1663–1734), a cousin of Cotton Mather. His father, Norman Mather, was a Princeton University professor of electrical engineering.
He spent his undergraduate years at Harvard University (BA 1964) and his graduate years at Princeton University (Ph.D. 1967).
In 1969, after two years spent at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, Mather was appointed Associate Professor at Harvard University. He was promoted to Full Professor in 1971. He taught Math 55. Some of his students in that class included Bill Gates and Peter Galison.
In 1974 Mather accepted a visiting Professorship at Princeton University, joining his father on the University faculty. His position was converted to a Full Professorship the following year.
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This entry incorporates text from “John N. Mather” 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.