Tracy Yerkes Thomas


Tracy Yerkes Thomas was an American mathematician.

Biography

Thomas received his A.B. in 1921 from Rice University and then his A.M. in 1922 and Ph.D. in 1923 from Princeton University. For the academic year 1923–1924 he was a National Research Fellow in Physics at the University of Chicago and in the academic year 1924–1925 a postdoc in Zürich. For the academic year 1925–1926 he was a National Research Fellow in Mathematics at Harvard University and then Princeton University, where he was on the mathematics faculty from 1926 to 1938. From 1938 to 1944 he was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. From 1944 to 1969 he was a professor at Indiana University. In 1952, he was one of the founders of the Journal of Rational Mechanics and Analysis, which is now known as the Indiana University Mathematics Journal.
Thomas was in 1941 elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Upon his death, he was survived by his wife, Virginia Rowland Thomas, and son, Tracy Alexander Thomas.

Selected publications

Articles