Gilbert Baumslag

Who is Gilbert Baumslag?

Gilbert Baumslag is a Distinguished Professor at the City College of New York, with joint appointments in mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering. He is director of the Center for Algorithms and Interactive Scientific Software, which grew out of the MAGNUS computational group theory project he also headed. Dr. Baumslag is also the organizer of the New York Group Theory Seminar, perhaps the foremost research seminar in group theory in the world.

Baumslag graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa with a B.Sc. Honours and D.Sc. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester in 1958; his thesis, written under the direction of Bernhard Neumann, was titled Some aspects of groups with unique roots. His contributions include the Baumslag-Solitar groups and parafree groups.

Baumslag was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1968-69. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.