Professor
Emeritus Alex Heller died on the afternoon of January 31st, 2008 at St.
Vincent's Hospital, after collapsing in his home from an aneurism the previous
day. He was 82 tears of age.
Prof.
Heller grew up in Brooklyn and Queens, New York. As a young man, he worked on the Manhattan
Project, under physicist Richard Feynman, in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Prof.
Heller was a long-time member of the CUNY Doctoral Faculty in
Mathematics. Joining the Math Ph.D. Program in the 1965, he was appointed
Distinguished Professor in 1970. Prof. Heller received his A.B. with
honors in Mathematics from Columbia University in 1947, and earned his Ph.D.
from Columbia University in 1950. Prof. Heller also taught at Harvard
University, the University of Illinois, and Oxford University, among other
institutions.
Prof.
Heller's main research interests were in algebraic topology and homological
algebra. A list of some of his papers can be found on MathSciNet at http://www.ams.org/msnmain?fn=130&fmt=hl&pg1=IID&s1=83900&v1=Heller%2C%20Alex.
On
Sunday, July 10th, 2005, the Math Program held a "Celebration
in Honor of the 80th Birthday of Prof. Alex Heller" to honor him. Prof. Heller often came to the Graduate Center
after his retirement to visit with faculty and students. Between 1967 and
2002, Prof. Heller supervised the research of fifteen CUNY Math Ph.D. students,
including the Program’s first graduate, Yuh-Ching Chen, in May 1966.
Prof.
Heller is survived by his wife Grace; their son Nicholas Heller of Portland,
Maine; grandchildren Alexandra and Maxim, and his brother Paul Heller of
Beverly Hills, California.
His
presence in our midst will be missed.