40. Oscar Zariski (1899-1986)

President 1969-1970

Zariski was forced to move several times in his life due to political forces--from Belarus to the Ukraine, to Italy, and finally to the U.S. in 1927. His principal academic appointments were at Johns Hopkins University (1927-1945) and at Harvard University (1947 until his retirement in 1969). He was awarded the AMS Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra in 1944 for papers on algebraic varieties; the U.S. National Medal of Science in 1965; the AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement in 1981 for his work in algebraic geometry, especially his fundamental contributions to the algebraic foundations of this subject; and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics in 1981. Zariski was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

• History of the Second Fifty Years: American Mathematical Society, 1939-1988, by Everett Pitcher (AMS, 1988), which includes AMS Presidents from 1939-1988 (and reports on all aspects of the Society during the period)
• The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
• Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Oscar Zariski, by Mike Hoffmann, Notable Mathematicians, U.S. Naval Academy
• The Unreal Life of Oscar Zariski, by Carol Ann Parikh (Academic Press, 1991)