24 Facts About Serge Lang

Serge Lang is known for his work in number theory and for his mathematics textbooks, including the influential Algebra.

Serge Lang received the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in 1960 and was a member of the Bourbaki group.

Serge Lang had a twin brother who became a basketball coach and a sister who became an actress.

Serge Lang moved with his family to California as a teenager, where he graduated in 1943 from Beverly Hills High School.

Serge Lang held faculty positions at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and Yale University.

Serge Lang studied at Princeton University, writing his thesis titled "On quasi algebraic closure" under the supervision of Emil Artin, and then worked on the geometric analogues of class field theory and diophantine geometry.

Serge Lang wrote on modular forms and modular units, the idea of a "distribution" on a profinite group, and value distribution theory.

Serge Lang was a prolific writer of mathematical texts, often completing one on his summer vacation.

Serge Lang wrote calculus texts and prepared a book on group cohomology for Bourbaki.

Serge Lang's Algebra, a graduate-level introduction to algebra, was a highly influential text that ran through numerous updated editions.

Serge Lang was noted for his eagerness for contact with students.

Serge Lang was described as a passionate teacher who would throw chalk at students who he believed were not paying attention.

Serge Lang spent much of his professional time engaged in political activism.

Serge Lang was a staunch socialist and active in opposition to the Vietnam War, volunteering for the 1966 anti-war campaign of Robert Scheer.

Serge Lang later quit his position at Columbia in 1971 in protest over the university's treatment of anti-war protesters.

Serge Lang engaged in several efforts to challenge anyone he believed was spreading misinformation or misusing science or mathematics to further their own goals.

Serge Lang attacked the 1977 Survey of the American Professoriate, an opinion questionnaire that Seymour Martin Lipset and E C Ladd had sent to thousands of college professors in the United States.

In 1986, Lang mounted what the New York Times described as a "one-man challenge" against the nomination of political scientist Samuel P Huntington to the National Academy of Sciences.

Huntington's supporters argued that Serge Lang's opposition was political rather than scientific in nature.

Serge Lang kept his political correspondence and related documentation in extensive "files".

Serge Lang would send letters or publish articles, wait for responses, engage the writers in further correspondence, collect all these writings together and point out what he considered contradictions.

Serge Lang often mailed these files to mathematicians and other interested parties throughout the world.

Serge Lang fought the decision by Yale University to hire Daniel Kevles, a historian of science, because Serge Lang disagreed with Kevles' analysis in The Baltimore Case.

Serge Lang argued that existing data did not support the conclusion that HIV causes AIDS.