Ralph Fox
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Ralph H. Fox was an American mathematician. As a professor at Princeton University, he taught and advised many of the contributors to the Golden Age of differential topology, and he played an important role in the modernization and main-streaming of knot theory.
His doctoral dissertation, On the Lusternick-Schnirelmann Category (1939), was directed by Solomon Lefschetz at Princeton University. (In later years he disclaimed all knowledge of Lyusternik-Schnirelmann category, and certainly never published on the subject again.) He directed 21 doctoral dissertations, including those of John Milnor, John Stallings, Francisco Javier González-Acuña, Guillermo Torres-Diaz and Barry Mazur.
His mathematical contributions include Fox n-coloring of knots and the free differential calculus.
Aside from his strictly mathematical contributions, he was responsible for introducing several basic bits of terminology to knot theory: the phrases slice knot, ribbon knot, and Seifert circle all appear in print for the first time under his name, and he also popularized (if he did not introduce) the phrase Seifert surface.
He popularized the playing of the oriental game of Go at both Princeton and the Institute for Advanced Study.
