James Waddell Alexander II

Born on September 19, 1888 in New Jeresy, Alexander was the son of John Alexander, the American painter who painted the murals in the US Library of Congress. Alexander attended Princeton University as a student of mathematics where he was awarded a B.S in 1910 and a M.S. in 1911. Starting in 1912, Alexander was a faculty member at Princenton up until the time that he was asked to join the new Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. He was a member of the institute until his retirement in 1951. The the Institure he was able to work out the generalization of the Jorndan curve and was also able to show the the homology of a simplical complex is a topological invariant, thusly contributing to knot theory. Alexander also developed the Alexander polynomial which is much used in knot theory.