Philip Franklin

Who was Philip Franklin?

Philip Franklin was an American mathematician and professor whose work was primarily focused in analysis.

Dr. Franklin received a B.S. in 1918 from City College of New York. He received his M.A. in 1920 and Ph.D. in 1921 both from Princeton University. His dissertation, The Four Color Problem, was supervised by Oswald Veblen. After teaching for one year at Princeton and two years at Harvard, Franklin joined the MIT Department of Mathematics, where he stayed until his 1964 retirement.

In 1922, Franklin gave the first proof that all planar graphs with at most 25 vertices can be four-colored.

In 1928, Franklin gave the first description of an orthonormal basis for L² consisting of continuous functions.

In 1934, Franklin published a counterexample to the Heawood conjecture, this 12-vertex cubic graph is now known as the Franklin graph.

Franklin also worked with Jay W. Forrester on Project Whirlwind at the Office of Naval Research.

Franklin was editor of the MIT Journal of Mathematics and Physics from 1929.