Robert Wayne Thomason

Robert Wayne Thomason (5 November 1952 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S. – 5 November 1995 in Paris, France)^[1] was an American mathematician who worked on algebraic K-theory. His results include a proof that all infinite loop space machines are in some sense equivalent, and progress on the Quillen–Lichtenbaum conjecture.

Thomason did his undergraduate studies at Michigan State University, graduating with a B.S. in mathematics in 1973. He completed his Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1977, under the supervision of John Moore. From 1977 to 1979 he was a C. L. E. Moore instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and from 1979 to 1980 he was a Dickson Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago before resigning due to perceived lack of support by senior faculty.^[2] After spending a year as a lecturer at MIT and another at the Institute for Advanced Study, he was appointed as faculty at Johns Hopkins University in 1983.

Thomason suffered from diabetes; in early November 1995, just shy of his 43rd birthday, he went into diabetic shock and died in his apartment in Paris.^[2]