Anthony Morse

Anthony Perry Morse (1911 to 1984) was an American mathematician who worked in both analysis, especially measure theory, and the foundations of mathematics. He was born in Ithaca, New York, studied at Cornell University and Brown University, and took his PhD at Brown in 1937 with C. R. Adams as thesis advisor. After two years at the Institute for Advanced Study he joined the mathematics faculty at Berkeley, where, apart from two interruptions, he spent the rest of his life. From 1943 until the end of World War II he worked on ballistics at the Aberdeen Proving Ground. He is best known as the co-creator, together with John L. Kelley, of Morse-Kelley set theory, which first appeared in print in Kelley's General Topology in 1955, while Morse's own version came later in his book A Theory of Sets. He is also known for the Morse-Sard theorem and the Federer-Morse theorem. His doctoral students included Herbert Federer, Woody Bledsoe and Maurice Sion. He should not be confused with Marston Morse, known for developing Morse theory.