Felix Browder

Felix Earl Browder (; July 31, 1927 – December 10, 2016) was an American mathematician known for his work in nonlinear functional analysis. He received the National Medal of Science in 1999 and was President of the American Mathematical Society until 2000. His two younger brothers also became notable mathematicians, William Browder (an algebraic topologist) and Andrew Browder (a specialist in function algebras).

Early life and education Felix Earl Browder was born in 1927 in Moscow, Russia, while his American father Earl Browder, born in Wichita, Kansas, was living and working there. He had gone to the Soviet Union in 1927. His mother was Raisa Berkman, a Russian Jewish woman from St. Petersburg whom Browder met and married while living in the Soviet Union. A 1999 book by Alexander Vassiliev, published after the fall of the Soviet Union, said that Earl Browder was recruited in the 1940s as a spy for the Soviet Union.

Felix Browder was a child prodigy in mathematics; he entered MIT at age 16 in 1944 and graduated in 1946 with his first degree in mathematics. In 1946, at MIT he achieved the rank of a Putnam Fellow in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. In 1948, at age 20, he received his doctorate from Princeton University.

Career Browder had an academic career, encountering difficulty in the 1950s in getting work during the McCarthy era because of his father's communist activities.

Browder headed the University of Chicago's mathematics department for 12 years. He also held posts at MIT, Boston University, Brandeis and Yale. In 1986 he became the first vice president for research at Rutgers University.

Browder received the 1999 National Medal of Science.

Browder was known for his personal library, which contained some thirty-five thousand books. "The library has a number of different categories," he said. "There is mathematics, physics and science as well as philosophy, literature and history, with a certain number of volumes of contemporary political science and economics. It is a polymath library. I am interested in everything and my library reflects all my interests."

Family Browder married Eva Tislowitz in 1949, born to Jewish parents. Their children included Thomas Browder, a physicist specializing in the experimental study of subatomic particles, and Bill Browder, who became CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and resides in London.

The late Dr. Browder had two younger brothers who were also research mathematicians, William (an algebraic topologist) and Andrew Browder "In addition to his brothers, survivors include the above mentioned two sons, Thomas Browder of Honolulu and Bill Browder of London; and five grandchildren."