John Griggs Thompson

Happy Birthday John Griggs Thompson! The mathematician was born in Ottawa, Kansas in 1932. He obtained his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1959. He has received both the Abel Prize and the Fields Medal, which is often called the Nobel of mathematics. Thompson’s work has been largely focused on group theory, which dictates the rules governing sets; an operation such as addition or multiplication can be performed on any two of the members of the set to form a third element. In 1963 Thompson and Walter Feit published a landmark theorem on finite simple groups. Thompson then contributed to the Enormous Theorem, a 10 000 page treatise that was completed by hundreds of mathematicians in 1981 to classify all finite simple groups. The importance of group theory goes well beyond math, as it is crucial for many subfields of physics and chemistry. (Photo credit: Renate Schmid, CC BY-SA 2.0 de)

Date in History: 13 October 1932