35. Edward James McShane

President 1959–1960

Ph.D. University of Chicago, Illinois, 1930

McShane spent most of his academic career at the University of Virginia, from 1935 to 1974. McShane is famous for his work in the calculus of variations, integration theory, stochastic calculus, and exterior ballistics. During World War II, from 1942-45, he was head of the Ballistics Research Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, and his joint treatise, Exterior Ballistics, written during this period and published in 1953, was considered the leading work on ballistics at the time. He also served as president of the Mathematical Association of America from 1953-54, and took an active interest in undergraduate mathematics. McShane was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Additional information

• MR Author Profile
• History of the Second Fifty Years: American Mathematical Society, 1939-1988, by Everett Pitcher (AMS, 1988), which includes AMS Presidents from 1939-1988 (and reports on all aspects of the Society during the period).
• The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
• Mathematics Genealogy Project
• "Edward James McShane," by Leonard D. Berkovitz and Wendell H. Fleming, Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences.
• Photographs in "Who's That Mathematician? Images from the Paul R. Halmos Photograph Collection".