John Henry Constantine Whitehead (known commonly as Henry Whitehead), had a large influence on the development of homotopy theory, which is based on a certain kind of mapping of topological spaces. With Oswald Veblen, he also wrote the classic Foundations of Differential Geometry. He was the nephew of mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead.

The son of a bishop, Whitehead was born in Madras, India on November 11, 1904. When he was about 18 months old, his parents took him to England and left him with his grandmother in Oxford before returning quickly to India. He would see virtually nothing of his parents until his father retired in 1920 or 1922 and moved back to England. Thus, he was raised primarily by his grandmother, who enrolled him in the local schools, where he did well both in his classes and at sports--especially boxing and cricket. He entered the prestigious school at Eton and...