13 Facts About Frank Adams

John Frank Adams was a British mathematician, one of the major contributors to homotopy theory.

Frank Adams was born in Woolwich, a suburb in south-east London, and attended Bedford School.

Frank Adams had a younger brother, Michael Adams, who rose to the rank of Air Vice-Marshal in the Royal Air Force.

Frank Adams began his academic career at Trinity College, Cambridge, as a student of Abram Besicovitch, but soon switched to algebraic topology.

Frank Adams received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1956.

Frank Adams's thesis, written under the direction of Shaun Wylie, was titled On spectral sequences and self-obstruction invariants.

Frank Adams held the Fielden Chair at the University of Manchester, and became Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry at the University of Cambridge.

Frank Adams was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1964.

Frank Adams used this spectral sequence to attack the celebrated Hopf invariant one problem, which he completely solved in a 1960 paper by making a deep analysis of secondary cohomology operations.

Frank Adams invented the Adams operations in K-theory, which are derived from the exterior powers; they are now widely used in purely algebraic contexts.

Frank Adams introduced them in a 1962 paper to solve the famous vector fields on spheres problem.

In 1974 Frank Adams became the first recipient of the Senior Whitehead Prize, awarded by the London Mathematical Society.

Frank Adams had many talented students, and was highly influential in the development of algebraic topology in Britain and worldwide.