Oswald Veblen

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Oswald Veblen

1880-1960

American mathematician who made important contributions to the study of topology and projective and differential geometry. After completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Iowa, Veblen spent a year at Harvard, then transferred to the University of Chicago, where he completed his doctorate in 1903. Veblen taught mathematics at Princeton from 1905 to 1932, then at the Institute for Advanced Study, which he helped establish in 1932. Veblen's research gave Princeton the honor of being one of the world's premier centers of topology research. Veblen served as both vice president and president of the American Mathematical Society and delivered the organization's Colloquium Lecture, on the topic of topology, in 1916.