Frederick Justin Almgren Jr. (July 3, 1933 – February 5, 1997) was an American
mathematician working in
geometric measure theory. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama.
Almgren was a student of
Herbert Federer, one of the founders of
geometric measure theory, and was the advisor and husband (as his second wife) of
Jean Taylor.
His daughter,
Ann S. Almgren, is an applied mathematician who works on computational simulations in astrophysics. His son,
Robert F. Almgren, is an applied mathematician working on market microstructure and trade execution.
Almgren died in Princeton, New Jersey on February 5, 1997, aged 63.
Selected publications
Almgren, Frederick J. Jr. (1964), The theory of varifolds: A variational calculus in the large for the -dimensional area integrand,
Princeton:
Institute for Advanced Study. A set of
mimeographed notes in which Frederick J. Almgren Jr. introduces the term "varifold" for the first time.
Almgren, Frederick J. Jr. (1966), Plateau's Problem: An Invitation to Varifold Geometry, Mathematics Monographs Series (1st ed.), New York–Amsterdam: W. A. Benjamin, Inc., pp. XII+74,
MR0190856,
Zbl0165.13201. The first widely circulated book describing the concept of a varifold and its applications to the
Plateau's problem.
^See his mimeographed notes (
Almgren 1964) and his book (
Almgren 1966): the former one is the first exposition of his ideas, but the book (in both its first and second editions (
Almgren 2001)) had and still has a wider circulation.
^Young calls these geometric objects generalized surfaces: in his commemorative papers describing the research of Almgren,
Brian White (
1997, p.1452, footnote 1,
1998, p.682, footnote 1) writes that these are "essentially the same class of surfaces".