Griffith C. Evans

"Griffith Evans" redirects here. For the Australian politician, see Griffith Evans (politician).

Griffith Conrad Evans
File:Griffith C. Evans.jpg
Born	11 May 1887 (1887-05-11)
Died	8 December 1973 (1973-12-09) (aged 86)
Residence	United States
Nationality	American
Fields	Potential theory Functional analysis Integral equations
Institutions	Rice University University of California, Berkeley
Alma mater	Harvard University
Doctoral advisor	Maxime Bôcher
Doctoral students	John Gergen Alfred Horn Kenneth May

Griffith Conrad Evans (11 May 1887 – 8 December 1973) was a mathematician working for much of his career at the University of California, Berkeley. He is largely credited with elevating Berkeley's mathematics department to a top-tier research department, having recruited many notable mathematicians in the 1930s and 1940s.

Biography

Evans earned his PhD at Harvard in 1910 under Maxime Bôcher with a dissertation on Volterra's Integral Equation, after which he did a post-doc for two years at the University of Rome on a Sheldon Fellowship from Harvard. Evans was then appointed assistant professor at Rice University in 1912 and promoted to professor in 1916. He married Isabel Mary John in 1917 and they would eventually have 3 children. In 1934, he moved to University of California, Berkeley to chair the mathematics department. Here, Evans was tasked with improving the department, including the initiation of a graduate program. Much of his success was due to his ability to recruit many notable research mathematicians, including Hans Lewy, Jerzy Neyman, and Alfred Tarski. His own research work was in potential theory and mathematics applied to economics. He chaired Berkeley's department until 1949 and retired in 1955, eventually becoming the namesake of Evans Hall at Berkeley.

Notable positions

• Chair, University of California, Berkeley Mathematics Department (1934–1949)
• President, American Mathematical Society (1939–1940)
• Member, National Academy of Sciences (1933)

Biographical references

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External links

• Griffith C. Evans at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• portrait