A Life of Math

Gleason says he has been interested in math problems and numbers for as long as he can remember. "As a child, I had learned how to do long division and that kind of thing, but it was not something that I particularly enjoyed. I was fascinated, though, with some games my father used to play, which involved numbers and cards."

When he was taking a high school geometry class, Gleason says he suddenly realized he understood more about math than did his teacher. While his contemporaries were having difficulties solving proofs and determining the volumes of spheres, he understood the subject well enough to help his teacher with the explanations in class--an experience that led him to his decision to become a researcher and a teacher.

Gleason majored in math as an undergraduate at Yale, and after a stint in the Navy during World War II, he became a junior fellow at the Society of Fellows program at Harvard.

"In the orignal days when President Lowell began the Society of Fellows, the purpose was to break the stronghold of Ph.D. s, which seemed to be oppressive in American academia at the time," says Gleason, a New York native. "So I don't have a doctorate in mathematics and have never written a thesis, but with the fellowship I could study anything I wanted, and I studied math."

Gleason then returned to the Navy and served two years in the Korean War. He returned to Harvard in 1952 to become an assistant professor of math, a full faculty member in 1957 and the Hollis Professor of Mathematiks and Natural Sciences chair 12 years later.