Megginson, Robert Eugene, 1948-

Robert Eugene Megginson is an American mathematician, the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan.[1] His research concerns functional analysis and Banach spaces;[2] he is the author of the textbook An Introduction to Banach Space Theory (GTM 183, Springer, 1998).[3]

Megginson was born in 1948 in Washington, Illinois, of Oglala Sioux heritage on his mother's side,[2] and grew up in Sheldon, Illinois, where his father was mayor.[4] He earned a degree in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1969, and became a software specialist for the Roper Corporation until 1977, when he returned to graduate school.[2] He earned a master's degree in statistics in 1983,[5] He completed his Ph.D. in 1984 at the University of Illinois, with a thesis on normed vector spaces supervised by Mahlon M. Day.[6] This accomplishment made him one of only approximately 12 Native Americans to hold a doctorate in mathematics, and he has taken great interest in underrepresented minorities in mathematics.[2]

Megginson won the U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring in 1997.[7] The American Indian Science and Engineering Society gave him their Ely S. Parker Award for lifetime service to the Native American community in 1999.[5] The American Association for the Advancement of Science elected him as a fellow in 2009,[8] and in the same year the Mathematical Association of America gave him their Yueh-Gin Gung and Dr. Charles Y. Hu Award for Distinguished Service, for his work on underrepresented minorities.[9] In 2012, Megginson became one of the inaugural fellows of the American Mathematical Society.[10]