AMS Presidents: A Timeline

16. Gilbert Ames Bliss (1876-1951)

President, 1921-1922

When the U.S. joined World War I, Bliss was one of many mathematicians who contributed his scientific expertise; he worked on ballistics, designed new firing tables for artillery, and lectured on navigation. He spent the last part of his career at the University of Chicago (1908 until his retirement). His main work was on the calculus of variations, and he also studied singularities of real transformations in the plane. Bliss was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

• A Semicentennial History of the American Mathematical Society, 1888--1938 , by Raymond Clare Archibald (AMS, 1938), which contains CV, honors, bibliography, biographical notes and sources.
• The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
• Mathematics Genealogy Project
• A Century of Mathematics in America, Part II, Edited by Peter Duren with the assistance of Richard A. Askey and Uta C. Merzbach (American Mathematical Society, 1989), "Mathematics at the University of Chicago: A Brief History," by Saunders Mac Lane, p.127; and "Graduate Student at Chicago in the Twenties," by W.L. Duren, Jr., p.177.