Griffith Conrad Evans (11 May 1887 – 8 December 1973) was a mathematician working for much of his career at the University of California, Berkeley. He is largely credited with elevating Berkeley's mathematics department to a top-tier research department, having recruited many notable mathematicians in the 1930s and 1940s.
Biography Evans earned his PhD at Harvard in 1910 under Maxime Bôcher with a dissertation on Volterra's Integral Equation, after which he did a post-doc for two years at the University of Rome on a Sheldon Fellowship from Harvard. The experience of working under Vito Volterra shaped his intellectual life and solidified his interest in the application of mathematics to a broad range of fields. Evans became close to Volterra during his time at Rome, being invited on many occasions to lunch with the Volterra family; he would remain in contact with Virginia Volterra, Vito Volterra's niece, until the 1960s. Evans was appointed assistant professor at Rice University in 1912, with a recommendation letter from Volterra, and promoted to professor in 1916. He married Isabel Mary John in 1917 and they would eventually have 3 children. During his time at Rice, he managed to attract significant mathematicians as visiting professors, such as Szolem Mandelbrojt, Tibor Rado, and Karl Menger. His early research dealt with functional analysis, potential theory, integral equations, and mathematical economics. In 1934, he moved to University of California, Berkeley to chair the mathematics department. Here, Evans was tasked with improving the department, including the initiation of a graduate program. Much of his success was due to his ability to recruit many notable research mathematicians, including Hans Lewy, Jerzy Neyman, and Alfred Tarski. His own research work was in potential theory and mathematics applied to economics. He chaired Berkeley's department until 1949 and retired in 1955, eventually becoming the namesake of Evans Hall at Berkeley.
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