1940-

American Mathematician

In 1977 Daniel Quillen and Russian mathematician A. A. Suslin independently discovered two quite distinct proofs of a 20-year-old theory concerning the structure of generalized vector spaces. These proofs established that all abstract spaces of certain common types were constructed in direct analogy with two- and three-dimensional Euclidean space. In the following year, 1978, Quillen received the Fields Medal in recognition of this and other outstanding contributions to mathematical study.

The son of a chemical engineer who went on to become a physics teacher, Daniel Quillen was born in Orange, New Jersey, on June 27, 1940. He attended grade school at the private Newark Academy, then entered Harvard University. Then, after he received his B.A. in 1961, he continued his work at Harvard under the supervision of Raoul Bott. In 1964 Quillen earned his Ph.D. with a thesis on partial differential equations, Formal Properties of...