Nelson Dunford

Nelson James Dunford, who lived from 1906 to 1986, was an American mathematician known for his work in functional analysis, in particular the integration of vector-valued functions, ergodic theory and the theory of linear operators. He studied mathematics at the University of Chicago and received his doctorate at Brown University in 1936 under Jacob Tamarkin. In 1939 he moved to Yale University, where he stayed until his retirement in 1960. Several results carry his name, among them the Dunford decomposition, the Dunford-Pettis property and the Dunford-Schwartz theorem. With his doctoral student Jacob T. Schwartz he wrote the three-volume treatise Linear Operators, for which the two shared the Leroy P. Steele Prize of the American Mathematical Society in 1981. He also co-edited the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society from 1941 to 1945 and the series Mathematical Surveys and Monographs from 1945 to 1949.