Gordon Thomas Whyburn was an American mathematician who worked on topology.
Education
Whyburn studied at the University of Texas in Austin, where he received a bachelor"s degree in chemistry in 1925. Under the influence of his teacher Robert Lee Moore, Whyburn continued to study at Austin but changed to mathematics and earned a master"s degree in mathematics in 1926 and then a Doctor of Philosophy in 1927.
Career
After two years as an adjunct professor at University of Texas, with the aid of a Guggenheim fellowship Whyburn spent the academic year 1929/1930 in Vienna with Hans Hahn and in Warsaw with Kuratowski and Sierpinski. After the fellowship expired, Whyburn became a professor at Johns Hopkins University. From 1934 he was a professor at the University of Virginia, where he modernized the mathematics department and spent the rest of his career.
In the academic year 1952/1953 Whyburn was a visiting professor at Stanford University.
In 1953-1954 he served as president of the American Mathematical Society. His doctoral students include John L. Kelley and Alexander Doniphan Wallace. was a mathematics professor at University of California, Los Angeles and became known for his work on ordinary differential equations.
Membership
National Academy of Sciences]
He was chair of the department until his first heart attack in 1966. Edward J. McShane joined the department in 1935, and Gustav A. Hedlund was a member of the department from 1939 to 1948.