Person: Lorch, Edgar Raymond
Raymond Lorch was a Swiss-born American mathematician who worked in general topology and functional analysis.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- In the following year Myrtle, Arthur, Madeline, and Ray left Switzerland to join up with Henry Lorch who was working as a bank clerk in Bergen, New Jersey.
- Lorch attended Columbia University in New York where he studied mathematics and was awarded a Bachelor's degree, summa cum laude, in 1928.
- Obtaining a university position would have been almost impossible for Lorch but, fortunately for him, he was awarded a National Research Council Fellowship to finance a year of postdoctoral study at Harvard University working with Marshall Stone.
- Stone advised Lorch to more deeply study Hilbert spaces and Banach spaces.
- With the Great Depression still causing great worries about future jobs, Lorch applied for an extension to his one-year National Research Council Fellowship to visit the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.
- Lorch did not feel that anyone could carry out all the tasks that were expected of the assistant but he said he wouldd think it over.
- Lorch had a productive year with Frigyes Riesz.
- Returning to the United States in May 1935, Lorch was appointed as an Instructor in mathematics at Columbia University.
- In 1941 Lorch was promoted to assistant lecturer at Columbia University.
- Lorch was enthusiastic about visiting European countries and able to deliver lectures in five different languages.
- Between 1958 and 1990, Ray and Maristella de Panizza Lorch worked to enhance links, particularly educational links, between Europe and the United States.
- Lorch was Chairman of the Department of Mathematics at Barnard College from 1948 to 1963, and served as chairman of the committee on instruction in 1961.
- Lorch played an active role in the American Mathematical Society.
- It was music that was Lorch's greatest passion outside mathematics.
- It was fitting that Columbia University's Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, founded in 1991 by Maristella de Panizza Lorch, presented the first annual E R Lorch Memorial Recital on Wednesday, 1 May 2013 with a performance by Italian pianist Emanuele Torquati.
- In May 1989 Ray and Maristella de Panizza Lorch visited Hungary to celebrate Ray's long connections with the country beginning with his doctoral studies there in 1934.
- Lorch died on at St Luke's-Roosevelt Medical Center in Manhattan after a long illness.
Born 22 July 1907, Nyon, Switzerland. Died 5 March 1990, Manhattan, New York City, New York County, USA.
View full biography at MacTutor
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Origin Switzerland
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
