A Survey of Modern Algebra

Garrett Birkhoff published more than 200 papers and supervised more than 50 Ph.Ds. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He spent most of his career as a professor of mathematics at Harvard University. During the 1930s, Birkhoff, along with his Harvard colleagues Marshall Stone and Saunders MacLane, substantially advanced American teaching and research in abstract algebra. His 1935 paper, "On the Structure of Abstract Algebras" founded a new branch of mathematics, universal algebra. Saunders Mac Lane was the author or co-author of more than 100 research papers and six books. Mac Lane was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1949. He received the nation's highest award for scientific achievement, the National Medal of Science, in 1989. Mac Lane received two Guggenheim Fellowships and visited Australia as a Fulbright Scholar. Other honors include both the Chauvenet Prize and the Distinguished Service award of the Mathematical Association of America, the Steele Career Prize of the American Mathematical Society, and honorary fellowship in the Royal Society of Edinburgh.