James Waddell Alexander II

James Waddell Alexander II was a mathematician of the pre-World War II era, born on September 19, 1888 in Sea Bright, New Jersey, the only child of the portrait painter John White Alexander. He was part of an influential school of topology at Princeton University, along with Oswald Veblen and Solomon Lefschetz, and was a pioneer in algebraic topology. He graduated from Princeton in 1910, took his doctorate there in 1915, served in the Ordnance Department of the United States Army in World War I and retired as a captain, and was a professor at Princeton from 1920 to 1951. He was one of the first members of the Institute for Advanced Study, from 1933 to 1951, and was also a noted mountaineer.