Virgil Snyder

Virgil Snyder (1869-1950) was an American mathematician who specialised in algebraic geometry. Born in Dixon, Iowa, he took his bachelor's degree at Iowa State College in 1889, studied at Cornell, and then went to Germany on a fellowship, receiving his doctorate from the University of Göttingen in 1895 under Felix Klein. He returned to Cornell that year as an instructor, became a full professor in 1910 and retired in 1938 as professor emeritus. His research concerned configurations of ruled surfaces and Cremona and birational transformations. Over his career he supervised 39 doctoral students, 13 of them women, the best known being C. L. E. Moore. He was president of the American Mathematical Society in 1927 and 1928 and an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1928, 1932 and 1936.