Leonard Carlitz

Leonard Carlitz was an American mathematician, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 26 December 1907 and died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 17 September 1999. He published more than 700 papers, mainly in finite field theory, number theory and combinatorics. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1927 and completing a master's degree the following year, and wrote his doctorate under Howard H Mitchell, a student of Oswald Veblen. After a fellowship at the California Institute of Technology working with E T Bell and a year at Cambridge with G H Hardy, he joined Duke University in 1932 and stayed there until he retired in 1977, being named James B Duke Professor of Mathematics in 1964. He served on the editorial board of the Duke Mathematical Journal from 1938 and was its managing editor from 1945. His name survives in the Carlitz module, which grew out of papers of 1935 and 1938, and in the Carlitz conjecture of 1966.