Leonard Carlitz

Leonard Carlitz was an American mathematician. Carlitz supervised 44 doctorates at Duke University and published more than 770 papers.

Chronology

1907 Born Philadelphia, PA, USA
1927 BA, University of Pennsylvania
1930 PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 1930 under Howard Mitchell, who had studied under Oswald Veblen at Princeton
1930–31 at Caltech with E. T. Bell
1931 married Clara Skaler
1931–32 at Cambridge with G. H. Hardy
1932 Joined the faculty of Duke University where he served for 45 years
1938 to 1973 Editorial Board Duke Mathematical Journal
1939 Birth of son Michael
1940 Supervision of his first doctoral student E. F. Canaday, awarded 1940
1945 Birth of son Robert
1964 First James B. Duke Professor in Mathematics
1971 Birth of granddaughter Natasha
1977 Supervised his 44th and last doctoral student, Jo Ann Lutz, awarded 1977
1977 Retired
1982 Birth of granddaughter Ruth
1990 Death of wife Clara, after 59 years of marriage
1999 September 17 Died in Pittsburgh, PA
Mathematical work
The Carlitz module is generalized by the Drinfeld module
An identity regarding Bernoulli numbers
Carlitz wrote about Bessel polynomials
He introduced Al-Salam–Carlitz polynomials.
Carlitz' identity for bicentric quadrilaterals
He conjectured the Carlitz-Wan conjecture, later proved by Daqing Wan.
Publications

Leonard Carlitz published about 771 technical papers comprising approximately 7,000 pages. The effort to edit his collected works, undertaken originally by Professor John Brillhart, is ongoing.
Carlitz' exceptional productivity is described by David Hayes as follows:
About 160 articles by Carlitz are about finite fields. The textbook by Rudolf Lidl and Harald Niederreiter on the topic has 141 articles authored or coauthored by Carlitz in its reference list.