Stanisław Marcin Ulam

Stanisław Marcin Ulam (April 13, 1909 – May 13, 1984) was a Polish mathematician who participated in the Manhattan Project and originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons. He also invented nuclear pulse propulsion and developed a number of mathematical tools in number theory, set theory, ergodic theory, and algebraic topology. Stanisław Ulam was born in Lwów (German: Lemberg; Ukrainian: Lviv), Galicia, then in the Austro-Hungarian ... more

Stanisław Marcin Ulam (April 13, 1909 – May 13, 1984) was a Polish mathematician who participated in the Manhattan Project and originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons. He also invented nuclear pulse propulsion and developed a number of mathematical tools in number theory, set theory, ergodic theory, and algebraic topology. Stanisław Ulam was born in Lwów (German: Lemberg; Ukrainian: Lviv), Galicia, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (after the War, and until 1939, Lwów was in the Second Polish Republic). His family had its origins in the city's large Jewish minority population. His mentor in mathematics was Stefan Banach, a great Polish mathematician and one of the moving spirits of the Lwów School of Mathematics and more broadly of the remarkable Interbellum Polish School of Mathematics. Ulam went to the United States in 1938 as a Harvard Junior Fellow. He visited Poland in summer 1939 and together with his brother, Adam, escaped from Poland on the eve of the... less