Jon T. Pitts *74

Jon died May 30, 2024, in College Station, Texas, at the age of 76.

He was born Jan. 10, 1948, in San Marcos, Texas. While in high school, as an intern at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Jon devised a mathematical formulation for accurately guiding the insertion of radioactive needles to kill cancerous tissue in the human body. He published his findings, and his research was repeatedly honored.

Jon graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in mathematics in 1970. He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1974 with the thesis “Every Compact Three-Dimensional Manifold Contains Two-Dimensional Minimal Submanifolds.” The Almgren-Pitts min-max theory is named after him and his adviser, Frederick Almgren Jr *55.

Jon’s career began with faculty positions at the University of Rochester. In 1981, he was appointed professor of mathematics at Texas A&M University in College Station, where he remained until retiring in 2018. Jon also served as special assistant to the provost and accreditation liaison officer at Texas A&M. Funding from the National Science Foundation assisted him in founding the Texas Geometry and Topology Conference.

He is survived by his wife, Karen; daughter Jane; and three grandsons. 

Graduate alumni memorials are prepared by the APGA.