JOB TITLE: Professor Emeritus
RESEARCH AREA: Mathematical Analysis
RESEARCH INTERESTS: Partial differential equations, calculus of variations
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As published in the Fall 1995 Berkeley Mathematics Newsletter
Written by Lou Maull
Charles B. Morrey, Jr. was born in 1907 in Columbus, Ohio. He had a lifelong love of piano, though his overriding interest since childhood was mathematics. After receiving his AB in '27 and MA in '28 from Ohio State, he attended Harvard from 1928-31 when he received his Ph.D. in mathematics. After completion of his doctorate, he was a National Research Council Fellow at Princeton, the Rice Institute (now Rice University) and the University of Chicago.
In 1933, he accepted a position in the Department of Mathematics at Berkeley where he remained until he retired in 1973. At various times he was Chairman of the Department, Acting Chairman, Vice Chairman, and Director of the Center for Pure and Applied Mathematics.
Morrey was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton during 1937-38 and 1954-55. During World War II, he was a mathematician at the U.S. Ballistic Research Laboratory in Maryland. Also, he was variously Visiting Assistant Professor at Northwestern University, Visiting Professor at Chicago, and a Miller Research Professor at Berkeley.
Among his honors were Member, National Academy of Sciences; Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences; President of the American Mathematical Society in 1967-68. He received the prestigious Berkeley Citation in 1973.
Morrey's research led to the solution of many important problems. He has been one of the strongest workers in mathematical analysis. His first scientific contribution was probably his master's thesis, which contained a short proof of the measurability of the Dini derivatives of a measurable function.
One of his early proofs described the nature of the most general surface of finite Lebesgue area. Morrey worked on multiple integral problems in the calculus of variations. With his invention of the new class of function spaces, later called "Sobolev spaces," he was able to prove the existence of functions minimizing certain integrals. His proof which satisfied Euler's equation was decisive in the solution of two (the 19th and 20th) of the 23 famous key problems with which Hilbert challenged generations of mathematicians at the beginning of the 20th century. The methods invented by Morrey in this work are among the most powerful tools in non-linear analysis.
Morrey made contributions to applied mathematics working on the solution of the important problem of Plateau (problem of least area). He also worked on harmonic integrals using variational methods; proved the analyticity of the solutions of analytic elliptic equations; proved his theory of analytic embedding; published results on the parametric variational problem for double integrals; solved some DeGiorgi-Nash extensions.
In 1962, his first book, "University Calculus with Analytic Geometry," was released. This was the forerunner of the Protter-Morrey textbooks of Calculus and Analytic Geometry which have had much influence on the teaching of mathematics in high schools and colleges.
In 1964, his lectures for the prestigious AMS Colloquium series were included in his book "Multiple Integral Problems in the Calculus of Variations" in the Springer Grundlehren series. This is now a classical basic treatise that has had a broad impact on subsequent developments in the calculus of variations and partial differential equations.
In the 1979 issues of Manuscripta Mathematica, the dedication written by Stefan Hildebrandt read, "Please accept these papers as a token of our highest esteem and admiration for your scientific contributions. You have founded the modem calculus of variations, and you have become the teacher of all of us working in this field. Mathematics has dramatically been changed by your work, and I am sure that many more great discoveries will grow out of it."
In 1985, to honor Professor Charles Morrey, the Department created the Charles B. Morrey, Jr. Visiting Assistant Professorship. These two-year appointments are extremely competitive and go to especially promising Ph.D's.
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Updates to the Charles B. Morrey Jr. Visiting Assistant Professorship:
- In 2000, the Charles B. Morrey, Jr. Visiting Assistant Professorship was converted to a three-year appointment.
- On February 1, 2026, the Charles B. Morrey, Jr. Visiting Assistant Professorship was renamed as the Charles B. Morrey, Jr. Math Fellow.
