Paul Halmos
Oct. 7th, 2006 05:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI just heard from a friend that Paul Halmos has died, of pneumonia on the morning of the 2nd.
Halmos taught at UC Santa Barbara for a couple of years, fortuitously during my time as an undergraduate there. He was an outstanding teacher and a talented expositor; his books on measure theory and set theory are classic textbooks. (I have an autographed copy of Measure Theory.) He was my advisor there for a year or so, and it was he who persuaded me to graduate from UCSB in three years instead of four.
I hadn't seen him in many years, and now I never will again. I owe him quite a bit, and the world is the poorer for his absence. There's a brief obituary notice from the MAA here.
Addendum: I offer the following illustrative incident. He once asked in class whether there could be a three-dimensional analog of the Four-Color Theorem. I tentatively raised my hand and offered an argument against, involving stacking smaller and smaller cubes. He nodded, grinned hugely, and gave a one-word argument.
"Spaghetti".
Halmos taught at UC Santa Barbara for a couple of years, fortuitously during my time as an undergraduate there. He was an outstanding teacher and a talented expositor; his books on measure theory and set theory are classic textbooks. (I have an autographed copy of Measure Theory.) He was my advisor there for a year or so, and it was he who persuaded me to graduate from UCSB in three years instead of four.
I hadn't seen him in many years, and now I never will again. I owe him quite a bit, and the world is the poorer for his absence. There's a brief obituary notice from the MAA here.
Addendum: I offer the following illustrative incident. He once asked in class whether there could be a three-dimensional analog of the Four-Color Theorem. I tentatively raised my hand and offered an argument against, involving stacking smaller and smaller cubes. He nodded, grinned hugely, and gave a one-word argument.
"Spaghetti".
