Bennett, Albert A. ’10

Albert Arnold Bennett (1888-1971), professor of mathematics, was born on June 2, 1888 in Yokohama, Japan, where his father, Albert A. Bennett 1872, was a missionary and president of the Baptist Theological Seminary. Young Bennett lived in Japan until he was fourteen, when he was sent to live with relatives in Providence to continue his education. He graduated from Brown in 1910 and earned his master of science degree in 1911. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1915, having spent a year at the mathematical center at Göttingen. During World War I he was an army captain engaged in mathematical work at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. After the war, he worked for the War Department as a civilian ballistics expert. He taught at the University of Texas and Lehigh University, where he was head of the Mathematics Department, before coming back to Brown as professor of mathematics in 1927. His special interests were modern algebra and symbolic logic. Because of his initials he was sometimes called “A-squared Bennett.” In World War II he was again at Aberdeen Proving Grounds and, after the war, in Tokyo as a ballistics expert, attaining the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He retired from Brown, but continued teaching courses at Southern Illinois University, the University of Rhode Island, and Boston College, where he was teaching the week before his death in Providence on February 17, 1971 at the age of 83.