Career
Mac Lane was christened "Leslie Saunders MacLane", but "Leslie" fell into disuse because his parents, Donald MacLane and Winifred Saunders, came to dislike it. He began inserting a space into his surname because his first wife found it difficult to type the name without a space.
Mac Lane earned a BA from Yale University in 1930, and an MA from the University of Chicago in 1931. During this period, he published his first scientific paper, in physics and co-authored with Irving Langmuir. He attended the University of Göttingen, 1931–1933, studying logic and mathematics under Paul Bernays, Emmy Noether and Hermann Weyl. Göttingen's Mathematisches Institut awarded him the Ph.D. in 1934.
From 1934 through 1938, Mac Lane held short term appointments at Harvard University, Cornell University, and the University of Chicago. He then held a tenure track appointment at Harvard, 1938–1947, before spending the rest of his career at the University of Chicago. In 1944 and 1945, he also directed Columbia University's Applied Mathematics Group, which was involved in the war effort as a contractor for the Applied Mathematics Panel.
Mac Lane served as vice president of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and as president of the American Mathematical Society. While presiding over the Mathematical Association of America in the 1950s, he initiated its activities aimed at improving the teaching of modern mathematics. He was a member of the National Science Board, 1974–1980, advising the American government. In 1976, he led a delegation of mathematicians to China to study the conditions affecting mathematics there. Mac Lane was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1949, and received the National Medal of Science in 1989.
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