John A. Thorpe

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John Alden Thorpe (February 29, 1936 – January 18, 2021) was an American mathematician who worked in differential geometry. He earned a bachelor’s degree from MIT in 1958 and a Ph.D. from Columbia University under James Eells, focusing on higher order sectional curvature.

He was a Moore Instructor at MIT (1963–1965) and an assistant professor at Haverford College in 1965. He spent 1967–1968 as a visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study. In 1968 he joined SUNY Stony Brook as an associate professor, later becoming a full professor. In 1987 he became a professor and dean at SUNY Buffalo, and in 1993 he moved to Queens College, CUNY, where he also served as provost.

Thorpe served on the Board of Governors of the Mathematical Association of America (1984–1987) and was Executive Director of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (1998–2001).

With Nigel Hitchin, he independently discovered an inequality between topological invariants that provides a necessary condition for the existence of Einstein metrics on four-dimensional smooth compact manifolds. This is known as the Hitchin–Thorpe inequality.

Thorpe died on January 18, 2021, at age 84.