User:Topology1940/Robert M. Switzer

Robert Massey Switzer Jr. (born January 29, 1940, in Kingsport, Tennessee; died October 1, 2023, in Göttingen) was an American mathematician who specialized in Algebraic Topology. Switzer was awarded his PhD in 1965 by Hans Samelson at Stanford University (Homology with Local Coefficients and Applications to Fiber Spaces). Afterwards, he spent five years at the University of Manchester and then at the Georg-August-University of Göttingen, where he became a professor in 1973 and remained until his retirement in 2005.

He authored a textbook on Algebraic Topology in the Springer "Grundlehren" series. The book also covers advanced topics such as the calculation of various cobordism groups and the stable homotopy groups of spheres. In the 1960s, he worked on the obstruction theory of holomorphic vector bundles on projective spaces. From the mid-1980s, he turned to computer science and published books on operating systems and the object-oriented programming language Eiffel.

Through his commitment, he made a significant contribution to the establishment of the Institute for Computer Science at the Georg-August-University of Göttingen.

Books

 * Algebraic topology: homotopy and homology, Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften, Springer 1975, Reprint in der Reihe Classics in Mathematics 2002
 * mit Nigel Ray, Larry Taylor: Normal structures and bordism theory, with applications to MSp*, Memoirs AMS, 1977
 * Operating Systems. A practical approach, Prentice-Hall 1993
 * Eiffel, an introduction, Prentice-Hall 1993