Tom Mike Apostol (born 1923) is a Greek-American analytic number theorist and professor at the California Institute of Technology.
He was born in Helper, Utah in 1923. His parents, Emmanouil Apostolopoulos and Efrosini Papathanasopoulos, originated from Greece. Mr. Apostolopoulos's name was shortened to Mike Apostol when he obtained his United States citizenship, and Tom Apostol inherited this Americanized surname.
Apostol received his Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering, Master's degree in mathematics from the University of Washington, and a PhD in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1948. Apostol has since been a faculty member at UC Berkeley, MIT, and Caltech. He is the author of several influential graduate and undergraduate level textbooks.
He is a well-known teacher. He is the creator and project director for Project MATHEMATICS! producing videos which explore basic topics in high school mathematics. He has helped popularize the visual calculus devised by Mamikon Mnatsakanian with whom he has also written a number of papers, many of which appeared in the American Mathematical Monthly. Apostol also provided academic content for an acclaimed video lecture series on introductory physics, The Mechanical Universe.
In 2001, he was elected in the Academy of Athens. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
Famous quotes containing the word tom:
“Sir, there is more knowledge in a letter of Richardson’s, than in all Tom Jones.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)