W. Forrest Stinespring

William Forrest "Woody" Stinespring was an American mathematician, specializing in operator theory. He is known for the Stinespring factorization theorem.
While studying in Harvard University, Stinespring twice became a Putnam fellow, in 1947 and 1949. After graduating from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree, Stinespring received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1957. His thesis Integration for gages and duality theorems was written under the supervision of Irving Segal. Stinespring was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1957 to 1959. After teaching at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, MIT, and the University of Chicago, he became in 1966 a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, retiring there as professor emeritus in 1999. He wrote 7 papers with David Shale.
According to William Arveson:
W. Forrest Stinespring's father was William Franklin Stinespring, who was a professor at Duke University Divinity School from 1936 to 1971.

Selected publications

1959