Solomon Lefschetz

Solomon Lefschetz (3 September 1884 to 5 October 1972) was a Russian-born American mathematician who did fundamental work on algebraic topology, its applications to algebraic geometry, and the theory of non-linear ordinary differential equations. He was born in Moscow to Russian-Jewish traders who travelled around Europe and the Middle East on Ottoman passports, and the family moved to Paris, where he was educated in engineering at the École Centrale Paris. He emigrated to the United States in 1905 and was badly injured in an industrial accident in 1907, losing both hands. He turned to mathematics and received a doctorate in algebraic geometry from Clark University in 1911, then held positions at the Universities of Nebraska and Kansas before moving to Princeton University in 1924, where he remained until 1953.