Charles W. Curtis

Charles Whittlesey Curtis (October 13, 1926 – May 3, 2026) was an American mathematician and historian of mathematics, known for his work in finite group theory and representation theory. He was a professor of mathematics at the University of Oregon.

Life and career Curtis received a bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College in 1948, and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1951, under the supervision of Nathan Jacobson. He taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1954 to 1963. Subsequently, he moved to the University of Oregon, where he was an emeritus professor.

While at Yale, on June 17, 1950 in Cheshire, Connecticut, Curtis married his wife Elizabeth, a kindergarten teacher and childcare provider. At the time of their 50th anniversary in 2000, they had three grandchildren.

In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

Curtis died in Eugene, Oregon, on May 3, 2026, at the age of 99.

Research Curtis introduced Curtis duality, a duality operation on the characters of a reductive group over a finite field. His book with Irving Reiner was the standard text on representation theory for many years.

Publications .