Charles B. Morrey, Jr.

Charles Bradfield Morrey Jr. (July 23, 1907 – April 29, 1984) Perhaps from his mother's influence, he had a lifelong love for piano, even if mathematics was his main interest since his childhood. He was at first educated in the public schools of Columbus and, before going to the university, he spent a year at Staunton Military Academy in Staunton, Virginia. they married in 1937 With summers off the family enjoyed traveling: they crossed the United States by car at least 20 times, visiting many natural wonders, and looked forward to the AMS meetings, held each year in August. They usually spent abroad their sabbatical leaves, and doing so they visited nearly every European country, witnessing many changes succeeding during the period from the 1950s to the 1980s. and then studied at Harvard University under the supervision of George Birkhoff, obtaining a Ph.D. in 1931 with a thesis entitled Invariant functions of Conservative Surface Transformations. After being awarded his Ph.D, he was a National Research Council Fellow at Princeton, at the Rice Institute and finally at the University of Chicago. and was a faculty member until his retirement in 1973. In Berkeley, he was early given several administrative duties, for example being the Chairman of the Department of Mathematics during the period 1949–1954, and being the Acting Chairman, the Vice Chairman and the Director of the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics at various times. During the years 1937–1938 and 1954–1955 he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study: he was also Visiting Assistant Professor at Northwestern University, Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago and Miller Research Professor at Berkeley. On the fifth of June 1973 he was awarded the prestigious Berkeley Citation. and being continuously attentive for people, mathematics and musics. His human qualities are described as the complement to his ability in administrative duties and in scientific research: as a confirmation of his skills in scientific research, also states that he was one of the strongest workers in analysis.

The Charles B. Morrey Jr. Assistant Professorship In 1985 his widow, Frances Eleonor Morrey, née Ross, established the Charles B. Morrey Jr. Assistant Professorship at the Berkeley Mathematics department, to honor his memory.

Work

Research activity

Morrey worked on numerous fundamental problems in analysis, among them, the existence of quasiconformal maps, the measurable Riemann mapping theorem, Plateau's problem in the setting of Riemannian manifolds, and the characterization of lower semicontinuous variational problems in terms of quasiconvexity. He greatly contributed to the solution of Hilbert's nineteenth and twentieth problems.

Teaching activity Charles B. Morrey Jr. was a very effective teacher. His book was the forerunner of a sequence of texts on calculus and analytic geometry, written in collaboration with Murray H. Protter. According to and to , these books have had a wide influence on both university and high school teaching of mathematics. Morrey was also a successful advanced level teacher and thesis supervisor: at least 17 Ph.D. dissertations were written under his supervision.

Selected publications . The library file of C. B. Morrey Jr.'s master thesis (M. A. Thesis) at the university library of Ohio State University. . The library file of C. B. Morrey Jr.'s doctoral thesis, at the library of Harvard University. .

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