John Milnor

John Willard Milnor (b. February 20, 1931 in Orange, New Jersey) is an American mathematician known for his work in differential topology, K-theory, and dynamical systems, and for his influential books. He won the Fields Medal in 1962 and Wolf Prize in 1989. As of 2005, Milnor is a distinguished professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His wife, Dusa McDuff, is a professor of mathematics at Barnard College. As an undergraduat... more

John Willard Milnor (b. February 20, 1931 in Orange, New Jersey) is an American mathematician known for his work in differential topology, K-theory, and dynamical systems, and for his influential books. He won the Fields Medal in 1962 and Wolf Prize in 1989. As of 2005, Milnor is a distinguished professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His wife, Dusa McDuff, is a professor of mathematics at Barnard College. As an undergraduate at Princeton University he was named a Putnam Fellow in 1949 and 1950 and also proved the Fary-Milnor theorem. He continued on to graduate school at Princeton and wrote his thesis, entitled isotopy of links, which concerned link groups (a generalization of the classical knot group) and their associated link structure. His advisor was Ralph Fox. Upon completing his doctorate he went on to work at Princeton. In 1962 Milnor was awarded the Fields Medal for his work in differential topology. He later went on to win the National Medal of Science ... less