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Andrew Browder (January 8, 1931 – March 24, 2019) was an American mathematician at Brown University.

Background

Andrew Browder was born in Moscow, Russia, where his father Earl Browder, an American communist from Kansas, United States, was living and working for a period. His mother was Raissa Berkmann, a Russian Jewish woman from St. Petersburg. His brothers were Felix Browder (older), also born in Moscow, and William Browder (younger). All three brothers had careers in mathematics. Their father returned to the United States in the early 1930s, bringing his family with him. The senior Browder became head of the Communist Party USA. He ran for US president in 1936 and 1940.

Career

Browder traced his interest in mathematics to 1955 when he was a private at Fort Dix and Eisenhower offered early release to servicemen entering graduate school. He studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For two years he was a Miller Fellow at University of California, Berkeley and also studied at Aarhus, Denmark. As for teaching, "I taught well over one hundred courses, some of which I found interesting and enjoyable, some pretty depressing, most somewhere in between. The students had parallel experiences."

Personal life and death

Browder married and had three children including Laura Browder, professor of American Studies at the University of Richmond.

The analytic nature of the game of chess enthralled Browder early on: "My own main sport was always chess. My father taught me the game when I was six, a friend of the family gave me a chess book when I was eleven or twelve, and after that I was hooked."

Andrew Browder died age 88 on March 24, 2019.

Works

In 1969 Browder published Introduction to Function Algebras. "The author develops much of the general theory of function algebras and then applies it in the last two chapters to the theory of rational approximation in the plane, and to finding analytic structure in the spectrum of a Dirichlet algebra."

In 1996 he published an upper-level textbook Mathematical Analysis for well-motivated students having a background of calculus and linear algebra. Four topics are encompassed by the text: single-variable theory, topology and function spaces, measure theory and Lebesgue integration, and functions of several variables.

In 2000 Browder published his article "Topology in the Complex Plane", which described the Brouwer fixed point theorem, the Jordan curve theorem, and Alexander duality.

With Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Browder wrote "A variation formula for harmonic modules and its application to several complex variables".

References

1. "Andrew Browder | Department of Mathematics | Brown University". math.brown.edu. Archived from the original on 31 August 2018. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
2. ^ "Andrew Browder". Tribute Archive. 22 April 2019. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
3. M. Cook & R. C. Gunning (2013) Andrew Browder, Mathematicians: An Outer View of an Inner World, pages 124,5, Princeton University Press via Project MUSE
4. Nordlinger, Jay (22 January 2018). "A Family in History". National Review. Retrieved 28 April 2018.
5. "Dr. Laura Browder: Tyler and Alice Haynes Professor of American Studies". University of Richmond. Retrieved 28 April 2018.
6. H. S. Bear Mathematical Reviews #0246125
7. Robert G. Bartle Mathematical Reviews #1411675
8. A. Browder (2000) "Topology in the Complex Plane", American Mathematical Monthly 107(5): 393–401 MR1763391
9. A. Browder & Hiroshi Yamaguchi (1994) A variation formula for harmonic modules and its application to several complex variables, Hiroshima Mathematical Journal 24(3): 493–520 via Project Euclid

External sources

• Andrew Browder at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

• 20th-century American mathematicians
• 21st-century American mathematicians
• 1931 births
• 2019 deaths
• American mathematical analysts
• Browder family
• American people of Russian-Jewish descent
• American textbook writers
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni
• Brown University faculty