Person: Hewitt, Edwin
Edwin Hewitt made fundamental contributions to functional analysis, measure theory, and topology as well as Diophantine approximation, the structure of semigroups and abstract harmonic analysis. He is well-known for his discovery, in collaboration with Leonard Jimmie Savage, of the Hewitt-Savage zero-one law.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Margaret, born in Cheyenne, Laramie, Wyoming to William Eugene Guthrie and Margaret S Hewitt on 19 April 1889, was a teacher of English to adults and a co-author of An outline of vocabulary building; a course for adult Americans.
- Edwin, 10 years old at this time, is attending school.
- Edwin Hewitt, of 5016 Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Ill., Leelanau School, Glen Arbor, Michigan.
- We get some information about Hewitt from the 1940 US Census.
- Hewitt was awarded a first degree in 1940 and continued to undertake postgraduate studies for his Master's Degree which was awarded in 1941.
- Hewitt undertook research with Marshall Stone as his thesis advisor.
- Mr Hewitt was graduated from Harvard in 1940, where he received his master's degree in 1941 and his Ph.D. in 1942.
- The College records her address as 79 Chilton Street, Belmont, Massachusetts and her "not-so-secret passions are mountains, mathematicians, pretzels, and poetry." The date of their marriage is given as 4 March 1944 but that does not quite work with the fact that Hewitt returned to the United States on 10 August 1944.
- Hewitt taught at Bryn Mawr College for the year 1946-47, then moved to Chicago where he had two half-time jobs, one in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Chicago, the other on a military research project Chicago Ordnance Research.
- Hewitt spent the whole of his career at the University of Washington but spent time away on teaching visits, research visits and sabbatical leave: Uppsala, Sweden (1951-52), Australian National University, Canberra (1963; 1970; 1976, Mathematics Institute of Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia (1969-70; 1973; 1976), Erlangen and Passau, Germany (1975-76; 1986), the University of Texas (1972-73), the University of Fairbanks, Alaska (1982), Hokkaido University, Japan (1982), University of Passau, Federal Republic Germany (1986), University of Singapore (1988).
- His definitive departure at the age of 35 from topological research in favour of harmonic analysis and locally compact abelian groups has been much noted and discussed by Hewitt-watchers and interested amateur historians.
- Hewitt loved mathematics, music and, above all, travelling.
- Edwin Hewitt is in this last group.
Born 20 January 1920, Everett, Snohomish, Washington, USA. Died 21 June 1999, Seattle, Washington, USA.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Usa, Topology
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
