Samuel Eilenberg

Samuel Eilenberg (September 30, 1913 – January 30, 1998) was a Polish-born American mathematician.

Biography

He was born in Warsaw, Kingdom of Poland and died in New York City, USA, where he had spent much of his career as a professor at Columbia University.

He earned his Ph.D. from University of Warsaw in 1936. His thesis advisor was Karol Borsuk. His main interest was algebraic topology. He worked on the axiomatic treatment of homology theory with Norman Steenrod (whose names the Eilenberg–Steenrod axioms bear), and on homological algebra with Saunders Mac Lane. In the process, Eilenberg and Mac Lane created category theory.

Eilenberg was a member of Bourbaki and with Henri Cartan, wrote the 1956 book Homological Algebra,[1] which became a classic.

Later in life he worked mainly in pure category theory, being one of the founders of the field. The Eilenberg swindle (or telescope) is a construction applying the telescoping cancellation idea to projective modules.

Eilenberg also wrote an important book on automata theory. The X-machine, a form of automaton, was introduced by Eilenberg in 1974.

Eilenberg was also a prominent collector of Asian art. His collection mainly consisted of small sculptures and other artifacts from India, Indonesia, Nepal, Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Central Asia. In 1991-1992, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York staged an exhibition from more than 400 items that Eilenberg had donated to the museum, entitled The Lotus Transcendent: Indian and Southeast Asian Art From the Samuel Eilenberg Collection".

Notable awards

• Wolf Prize (1986)
• Leroy P. Steele Prize (1987)

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Samuel Eilenberg died in New York, January 30, 1998, after a two-year illness brought on by a stroke. He left no surviving family, except for his wide family of friends, students, and colleagues, and the rich legacy of his life’s work, in both mathematics and as an art collector.