Felix Browder

The eldest son of Earl Browder, the leader of the U.S. Communist Party, Felix Browder was a child prodigy who finished the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in two years and earned his PhD in mathematics at the age of twenty, but, due to his father's involvement in the Communist Party, found it very difficult to get a teaching position during the 1950s. With the personal intervention of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, he was able to secure a faculty position at Brandeis University in New York City, and soon excelled in various fields of mathematics, particularly in the field of nonlinear functional analysis. He eventually chaired the mathematics department of the University of Chicago, moving on to Rutgers University as vice president of research. In 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded Dr. Browder the National Medal of Science.