Bill Browder, influential and inspiring figure in mathematics, dies at 91

William “Bill” Browder, an emeritus professor of mathematics, died in early February at the age of 91. He died at home, excited about a new math idea he’d just had, held in his wife’s arms.

“Bill Browder was a kind and generous man who not only contributed greatly to the mathematics literature, but also greatly to the societal aspects of the mathematics community, as president of the American Mathematical Society and in many other ways,” said Elliott Lieb, Princeton’s Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics, Emeritus, and an emeritus professor of mathematical physics. “It was one of the high points of my own career to have had the opportunity to interact with him as a valued friend and coworker.”

Browder was known to his colleagues as a leading topologist and one of the inventors of surgery theory, which unifies methods and techniques from several branches of topology and brings them to bear on the classification of manifolds. His colleagues described his many mathematical contributions in detail when Browder retired in 2012.

Browder first came to Princeton in 1954 as a graduate student, having recently completed his undergraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Browder finished his Ph.D. at Princeton in 1958, then taught at the University of Rochester and Cornell University before returning to Princeton, where he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in 1963-64. In February 1964, Browder joined the Princeton University faculty as a full professor. At the time, the 30-year-old was the youngest full professor in the history of Princeton’s storied mathematics department. Browder served in many roles, including department chair and director of graduate studies, over the course of his half-century Princeton career.

“Bill was an influential mathematician, a wonderful person, and a dear friend. As my Ph.D. adviser at Princeton, he introduced me to the beauty of algebraic topology,” said Alejandro Adem, a 1986 Ph.D. graduate of Princeton and a professor of mathematics at the University of British Columbia. “I first met him in 1981, at a conference in Mexico. What most impressed me about him was that he was a person who was kind, approachable and most importantly had a great sense of humor. At Princeton, he was a supportive and caring adviser who never micromanaged but also never neglected his students.”

Browder was born in 1934 in New York to two lawyers, Raissa and Earl Browder. Raissa, a Jewish woman from Saint Petersburg, Russia, met American Communist Party leader Earl Browder, from Wichita, Kansas, when Earl lived in Moscow in the mid-1920s. They did not speak each other’s languages, but Raissa was won over by Earl’s sweetness to children, according to family stories. A prominent member of the Communist Party in her own right, Raissa came to the U.S. for a speaking tour while heavily pregnant with Bill.

The family settled in New York, where the three Browder boys attended local public schools before leaving New York for MIT. Two of them continued on to Princeton for graduate studies.

During his 60 years in Princeton, Bill Browder advised 33 Ph.D. students and numerous undergraduates who went on to brilliant mathematical careers, including at least one recipient each of the Fields Medal, the Abel Prize, the Wolf Prize and two recipients of the National Medal of Science.

“Bill was an adviser par excellence, showing us great math with great opportunities at the cutting edge,” said Dennis Sullivan, a 1966 Ph.D. graduate and 2004 National Medal of Science laureate who is now the Albert Einstein Chair at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a distinguished professor State University of New York-Stony Brook. “He showed us how to classify closed manifolds in terms of homotopy invariants from algebraic topology. It was amazing.”

During the late 1970s, Browder served as chair of the Office of Mathematical Sciences of the National Research Council. He helped establish the David Committee, which was charged with investigating the underfunding of mathematical research in the U.S. The committee’s report marked a turning point in the funding of mathematics, and it was later used as a basis for briefings for the White House and for the Pentagon.

“When I first came to Princeton as a graduate student in 1989, I was somewhat lost, not knowing which mathematical path I would take,” said Peter Ozsváth, a 1994 Ph.D. graduate who is now Princeton’s Sheila and David Manischewitz ’59 Professor of Mathematics. “With his characteristic laid-back enthusiasm, Bill encouraged me to study the exciting new world of four-dimensional topology. It was not his area of expertise, [so] Bill encouraged me to find experts in the field to help me find a thesis problem. I had the great fortune to end up working with John Morgan at Columbia, but that belongs to another story.

“After that, my primary relationship with Bill was through music, lasting long past my graduate student days. Bill was an avid flute player, who organized amazing chamber music bashes about once a month at his house. We checked out a shelf-full of scores of music from the music library, and then he would invite over to his house all the musically inclined mathematicians, having us play, both with him and without him. I remember sessions that lasted from 1 p.m. to 1 a.m.! There was always a break for a massive feast Bill would prepare, sometimes with traditional Danish food. He was an inspiring figure, the last of the great homotopy theorists at Princeton. He will be greatly missed.”

Among his many honors, Browder was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. He was editor of the Annals of Mathematics from 1969 to 1981. Browder and his older brother Felix, himself a Princeton Ph.D. graduate in 1948, were two of the inaugural fellows of the American Mathematical Society. Bill served as the AMS president from January 1989 to December 1990, with Felix following in his footsteps a decade later (1999-2000).

Browder is survived by his wife, Lisbeth Moeller, his children Risa, Dan and Emil Browder, and several nieces and nephews (including his namesake Bill Browder). He was predeceased by his brothers Felix *48 and Andrew, both eminent mathematicians.

View or share comments on a memorial page intended to honor Browder’s life and legacy.