American mathematician
Robert Louis Griess, Jr. (born 1945, Savannah, Georgia) is a mathematician working on finite simple groups and vertex algebras.[1] He is currently the John Griggs Thompson Distinguished University Professor of mathematics at University of Michigan.[2]
Education
Griess developed a keen interest in mathematics prior to entering undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1963.[3] There, he eventually earned a Ph.D. in 1971 after defending a dissertation on the Schur multipliers of the then-known finite simple groups.[4]
Career
Griess' work has focused on group extensions, cohomology and Schur multipliers, as well as on vertex operator algebras and the classification of finite simple groups.[5][6] In 1982, he published the first construction of the monster group using the Griess algebra, and in 1983 he was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Warsaw to give a lecture on the sporadic groups and his construction of the monster group.[7] In the same landmark 1982 paper where he published his construction, Griess detailed an organization of the twenty-six sporadic groups into two general families of groups: the Happy Family and the pariahs.[8]
He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007, and a fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012.[9][10] In 2020 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences.[11] Since 2006, Robert Griess has been an editor for Electronic Research Announcements of the AIMS (ERA-AIMS), a peer-review journal.[12]
In 2010, he was awarded the AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research for his construction of the monster group, which he named the Friendly Giant.[13]
