Rich wrote: <<
Whit Diffie passed along the news that Andrew Gleason has died. --Rich
<url is split> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2008/10/20/ andrew_gleason_helped_solve_vexing_geometry_problem/
Here's another one with links: < http://www.math.harvard.edu/history/gleason/index.html >. I think Gleason was most famous for solving (with Deane Montgomery and Leo Zippin) Hilbert's 5th Problem, which asks whether, given a topological manifold M with a topological group structure on it (i.e., the map MxM -> M via (x,y) |-> x/y is continuous), there is always a real analytic atlas on M for which the group operations are real analytic. (At least that's how I remember it.) (Before that, he was a Putnam Fellow three times.) --Dan _____________________________________________________________________ "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi." --Peter Schickele