21. Luther Pfahler Eisenhart

President, 1931–1932

Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, 1900

Eisenhart published a wealth of research in the field of differential geometry and its physical applications. He developed a remarkable body of original work and served his colleagues by publishing surveys of fields in which he had become a specialist. He was the first American to publish a general work in the field of differential geometry, for instance.

Eisenhart spent most of his career at Princeton University (1900 until his retirement in 1945); he became professor in 1909, served as dean of the faculty from 1923 to 1933, and was appointed dean of the graduate school in 1933. Over the years Eisenhart had a varied association with the AMS, serving as Vice President, editor of Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, Colloquium Lecturer, and President. Eisenhart was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Additional information

• MR Author Profile
• A Semicentennial History of the American Mathematical Society, 1888--1938, by Raymond Clare Archibald (AMS, 1938), which contains CV, honors, bibliography, biographical notes and sources.
• The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
• Mathematics Genealogy Project
• A Century of Mathematics in America, Part I, Edited by Peter Duren with the assistance of Richard A. Askey and Uta C. Merzbach (American Mathematical Society, 1988), "Luther Pfahler Eisenhart," by Solomon Lefschetz, p.56.