author
Chandler Davis
1926–2022
A mathematician, teacher, writer, and lifelong activist, he built a remarkable career while standing firm on his political principles. His life joined serious scholarship with a deep commitment to justice, freedom of thought, and humane public debate.
2 Audiobooks
Blind Play
by Chandler Davis
The statistomat pitch
by Chandler Davis
About the author
Born in Ithaca, New York, in 1926, Chandler Davis became known as an accomplished mathematician whose work centered on linear algebra and operator theory. He studied at Harvard and later taught at the University of Toronto for three decades, where he influenced generations of students and colleagues.
His life was shaped as much by conscience as by scholarship. In the McCarthy era, he refused to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee, a stand that led to dismissal from the University of Michigan and a jail sentence. He later moved to Canada in 1962 and continued both his academic work and his public activism there.
Davis was also a writer and editor with wide-ranging interests beyond mathematics. Alongside his research and teaching, he wrote poetry and science fiction, helped shape The Mathematical Intelligencer, and was remembered for encouraging others, including women in mathematics, with warmth, seriousness, and moral courage.