Firing Section at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, applying the calculus of variations to correct shell trajectories for the effects of wind, changes in air density, the rotation of the Earth, and other perturbations. Bliss married Helen Hurd in 1912, who died in the 1918 influenza pandemic; their two children survived. Bliss married Olive Hunter in 1920; they had no children. Bliss was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (United States) in 1916. He was the American Mathematical Society's Colloquium Lecturer (1909), Vice President (1911), and President (1921–22). He received the Mathematical Association of America's first Chauvenet Prize, in 1925, for his article "Algebraic functions and their divisors," which culminated in his 1933 book Algebraic functions. Bliss once headed a government commission that devised rules for apportioning seats in the U.S. House of Representatives among the several states. Work Bliss's work on the calculus of variations culminated in his classic 1946 monograph, Lectures on the Calculus of Variations, which treated the subject as an end in itself and not as an adjunct of mechanics. Here Bliss achieved a substantial simplification of the transformation theories of Clebsch and Weierstrass. Bliss also strengthened the necessary conditions of Euler, Weierstrass, Legendre, and Jacobi into sufficient conditions. Bliss set out the canonical formulation and solution of the problem of Bolza with side conditions and variable end-points. Bliss's Lectures more or less constitutes the culmination of the classic calculus of variations of Weierstrass, Hilbert, and Bolza. Subsequent work on variational problems would strike out in new directions, such as Morse theory, optimal control, and dynamic programming. Bliss also studied singularities of real transformations in the plane. Publications 1925 Calculus of Variations 1933 Algebraic Functions 1944 Mathematics for Exterior Ballistics 1946 Lectures on the Calculus of Variations References MacTutor: Gilbert Ames Bliss. The source for most of this entry. Ames' Students at the Mathematics Genealogy Project External links National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir 1876 births 1951 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians Mathematical analysts Ballistics experts People from Chicago University of Chicago alumni University of Chicago faculty University of Missouri faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Presidents of the American Mathematical Society Mathematicians from Illinois University of Missouri mathematicians