Person: Almgren, Frederick Justin
Frederick Almgren was an American mathematician who worked in geometric measure theory.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Almgren was an undergraduate at Princeton University but he did not major in mathematics, rather his main topic was engineering and it was in that subject that he graduated in 1955.
- In 1958 Almgren entered Brown University to begin research in mathematics.
- Federer supervised Almgren doctoral studies and Almgren wrote a thesis The Homotopy Groups of the Integral Cycle Groups which earned him a Ph.D. in 1962.
- After completing his studies at Brown University, Almgren was appointed as an Instructor in Mathematics at Princeton University.
- In 1968 Almgren was promoted to associate professor and then full professor in 1972.
- Throughout his career, Almgren brought great geometric insight, technical power, and relentless determination to bear on a series of the most important and difficult problems in his field.
- Almost certainly Almgren's most impressive and important result was only published in 2000, three years after his death.
- Around 1974, Almgren started on what would become his most massive project, culminating ten years later in a three-volume, 1700-page preprint containing a proof that the singular set not only has m-dimensional measure 0, but in fact has dimension at most (m - 2).
- Now, thanks to the efforts of editors Jean Taylor and Vladimir Scheffer, Almgren's three-volume, 1700-page typed preprint has been published as a single, attractively typeset volume of less than 1000 pages.
- Let us record three comments by former Ph.D. students of Almgren.
- Fred Almgren received many honours for his outstanding contributions.
Born 3 July 1933, Birmingham, Alabama, USA. Died 5 February 1997, Princeton, USA.
View full biography at MacTutor
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Origin Usa
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- @J-J-O'Connor
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References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
