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Leonard Blumenthal

American mathematician (1901–1984)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ3709241
Source-derived summary

Leonard Mascot Blumenthal (February 27, 1901 – August 1984) was an American mathematician.

Career

Blumenthal was Jewish. He received his Ph.D. in 1927 from Johns Hopkins University, under the supervision of Frank Morley; his dissertation was titled Lagrange Resolvents in Euclidean Geometry. He taught for the majority of his professional career at the University of Missouri and was the author of A Modern View of Geometry.

He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1933 to 1936. According to the Mathematics Genealogy Project, he had 18 Ph.D. students at Missouri, among them Leroy Milton Kelly and William Arthur Kirk; he is the academic ancestor of over 80 mathematicians.

Legacy

The Leonard M. Blumenthal Distinguished Professorship in Mathematics at the University of Missouri was established in 1992 in honor of Blumenthal. This endowed chair is given on a five-year rotating basis to Missouri mathematics professors; the Blumenthal Professors at Missouri have included John Beem, Mark Ashbaugh, Alex Koldobsky, and Zhenbo Qin. The American Mathematical Society also issued the Blumenthal Award in his honor.

References

Works

Blumenthal L.M. Theory and applications of distance geometry (1953), Oxford: At the Clarendon Press (Geoffrey Cumberlege), XI, 347 p.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Leonard Blumenthal” as american mathematician (1901–1984). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1901, 1984, 1927, 1933—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1901-02-27. The account is most persuasive where Leonard, Blumenthal and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american mathematician (1901–1984). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

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 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3709241. VIAF identifies the subject as 110908208. The Library of Congress control number is n89604765. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1901, 1984, 1927 and 1933.

Critical limits

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.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Leonard Blumenthal” 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.