Tom M. Apostol

Apostol was born in Helper, Utah, on August 20, 1923. He received his bachelor of science in chemical engineering in 1944 and a master's degree in mathematics in 1946, both from the University of Washington, Seattle. In 1948, he received his PhD in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1950, he arrived at Caltech as an assistant professor; he was named associate professor in 1956, professor in 1962, and professor emeritus in 1992.

Apostol was the author of several influential textbooks. For more than five decades, undergraduate introductory mathematics courses at Caltech have used Apostol's two-volume text, "Calculus," which is often referred to by Caltech students as "Tommy 1" and "Tommy 2." These volumes, as well as many of his other textbooks in mathematical analysis and analytic number theory, have been translated into Greek, Italian, Spanish, Farsi, and Portuguese. Apostol also worked with a Caltech team that produced The Mechanical Universe . . . and Beyond, a 52-episode video lecture series based on The Mechanical Universe: Introduction to Heat and Mechanics and Beyond the Mechanical Universe: From Electricity to Modern Physics, the introductory physics textbooks that Apostol coauthored.