John Henry Constantine Whitehead (11 November 1904- 8 May 1960), known as Henry, was a British mathematician who was one of the founders of homotopy theory. He was born in Madras (now known as Chennai) in India and died in Princeton, New Jersey in 1960. November 11 is the 315th day of the year (316th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 50 days remaining. ... 1904 (MCMIV) was a leap year starting on a Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... May 8 is the 128th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (129th in leap years). ... 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1960 calendar). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... An illustration of a homotopy between the two bold paths In topology, two continuous functions from one topological space to another are called homotopic (Greek homeos = identical and topos = place) if one can be continuously deformed into the other, such a deformation being called a homotopy between the two functions. ... Chennai   (Tamil: ), formerly known as Madras  , is the capital of the state of Tamil Nadu and is Indias fourth largest metropolitan city. ... Princeton, New Jersey, is the name of a section of Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. ...

He was brought up in Oxford, as was educated at Eton College and Balliol College of Oxford University, reading mathematics. After a year working as a stockbroker, he started a Ph.D. in Princeton in differential geometry under Oswald Veblen in 1929. He worked also with Lefschetz. He became a fellow of Balliol in 1933. During the Second World War he worked on operations research for submarine warfare. He became a professor at Oxford in 1947. Oxford is a city and local government district in Oxfordshire, England, with a population of 134,248 (2001 census). ... The Kings College of Our Lady of Eton beside Windsor, commonly known as Eton College or just Eton, is a prestigious and internationally known Public School for boys. ... Full name Balliol College Motto - Named after John de Balliol Previous names - Established 1263 Sister College St Johns College, Cambridge Master Andrew Graham (academic) Location Broad Street Undergraduates 403 Graduates 228 Homepage Boatclub Balliol College, founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford... The University of Oxford, located in the city of Oxford in England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... Princeton University is a coeducational private university located in Princeton, New Jersey. ... In mathematics, differential topology is the field dealing with differentiable functions on differentiable manifolds. ... Oswald Veblen (24 June 1880 - 10 August 1960) was an American mathematician. ... Solomon Lefschetz (3 September 1884-5 October 1972) was a US mathematician who did fundamental work on algebraic topology, its applications to algebraic geometry, and the theory of non-linear ordinary differential equations. ... Operations research, operational research, or simply OR is an interdisciplinary science which deploys scientific methods like mathematical modeling, statistics, and algorithms to decision making in complex real world problems which are concerned with coordination and execution of the operations within an organization. ...

His definition of CW complexes gave a setting for homotopy theory that became standard. He introduced the idea of simple homotopy theory, which was later much developed in connection with algebraic K-theory. The Whitehead product is an operation in homotopy theory. The Whitehead problem on abelian groups was solved (as an independence proof) by Saharon Shelah. His involvement with topology and the Poincaré conjecture led to the creation of the Whitehead manifold. In topology, a CW complex is a type of topological space introduced by J.H.C. Whitehead to meet the needs of homotopy theory. ... In mathematics, K-theory is, firstly, an extraordinary cohomology theory which consists of topological K-theory. ... The Whitehead product is a super quasi-Lie algebra structure on the homotopy groups of a space. ... In group theory, the Whitehead problem is the following question: Is every abelian group A with Ext1(A, Z) = 0 a free abelian group? The condition Ext1(A, Z) = 0 can be equivalently formulated as follows: whenever B is an abelian group and f : B → A is a surjective... In mathematics, an abelian group, also called a commutative group, is a group such that for all a and b in G. In other words, the order of elements in a product doesnt matter. ... Saharon Shelah (שהרן שלח, born July 3, 1945 in Jerusalem) is an Israeli mathematician. ... In mathematics, the Poincaré conjecture (IPA: [])[1] is a conjecture about the characterization of the three-dimensional sphere amongst three-dimensional manifolds. ... In mathematics, the Whitehead manifold is an open 3-manifold that is contractible, but not homeomorphic to . ...

He founded the journal Topology. Topology is a distinguished mathematical journal publishing scholarly articles related to topology and geometry. ...

The definition of crossed modules is due to him. In mathematics, and especially in homotopy theory, a crossed module consists of groups G and H, where G acts on H (which we will write on the left), and a homomorphism of groups that is equivariant with respect to the conjugation action of G on itself: and also satisfies the...

He was the nephew of Alfred North Whitehead. Alfred North Whitehead, OM (February 15, 1861 Ramsgate, Kent, England– December 30, 1947 Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA) was an English mathematician who became an American philosopher. ...

See also

• Whitehead link
• Whitehead product
• Whitehead torsion
• CW_complex