J. Peter May

J. Peter May
Born	16 September 1939 New York
Alma mater	Princeton University
Known for	May spectral sequence, the word operad
Awards	Fellow of the AMS
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Thesis	The cohomology of restricted Lie algebras and Hopf algebras: Application to the Steenrod algebra  (1964)
Doctoral advisor	John Moore
Doctoral students	Mark Behrens, Frederick Cohen, Zbigniew Fiedorowicz, Nicholas Kuhn, Ib Madsen, Michael Mandell, Emily Riehl
Website	https://www.math.uchicago.edu/~may/

Jon Peter May (born September 16, 1939 in New York) is an American mathematician, working in the fields of algebraic topology, category theory, homotopy theory, and the foundational aspects of spectra. He is known, in particular, for inventing the term operads and for the May spectral sequence.

Biography

He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Swarthmore College in 1960 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Princeton University in 1964. His thesis, written under the direction of John Moore, was titled The cohomology of restricted Lie algebras and of Hopf algebras: Application to the Steenrod algebra. From 1964 to 1967 he taught at Yale University. He has been a faculty member at the University of Chicago since 1967, and a Professor since 1970. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. He has advised over 50 doctoral students, among them Mark Behrens, Frederick Cohen, Zbigniew Fiedorowicz, Nicholas Kuhn, Ib Madsen, Michael Mandell, and Emily Riehl.

External links

• May's homepage at the University of Chicago
• Jon Peter May at the Mathematics Genealogy Project