He was born to a
Jewish family in
New York City, the son of Sarah (née Kommel) and Louis Douglas. He attended
City College of New York as an undergraduate, graduating with honors in Mathematics in 1916. He then moved to
Columbia University as a graduate student, obtaining a
PhD in mathematics in 1920. Douglas was one of two winners of the first
Fields Medals, awarded in 1936. He was honored for solving, in 1930, the
problem of Plateau, which asks whether a minimal surface exists for a given boundary. The problem, open since 1760 when
Lagrange raised it, is part of the
calculus of variations and is also known as the
soap bubble problem. Douglas also made significant contributions to the
inverse problem of the calculus of variations. The
American Mathematical Society awarded him the
Bôcher Memorial Prize in 1943. Douglas worked at
Columbia University, the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the
Institute for Advanced Study. Later he became a full professor at the
City College of New York where he taught until his death. At the time CCNY only offered undergraduate degrees and he taught the advanced calculus course. == Selected papers ==