Joseph Fels Ritt was born August 23, 1893 in New York City. After beginning his undergraduate studies at
City College of New York, Ritt received his B.A. from
George Washington University in 1913. He then earned a doctorate in mathematics from Columbia University in 1917 under the supervision of
Edward Kasner. After doing calculations for the war effort in
World War I, he joined the Columbia faculty in 1921. He served as department chair from 1942 to 1945, and in 1945 became the Davies Professor of Mathematics. In 1932, George Washington University honored him with a Doctorate in Science, and in 1933 he was elected to join the
United States National Academy of Sciences. Ritt was an Invited Speaker with talk
Elementary functions and their inverses at the
ICM in 1924 in Toronto and a Plenary Speaker at the ICM in 1950 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ritt founded
differential algebra theory, which was subsequently much developed by him and his student Ellis Kolchin. He is known for his work on characterizing the
indefinite integrals that can be solved in closed form, for his work on the theory of
ordinary differential equations and
partial differential equations, for beginning the study of
differential algebraic groups, :Here at your feet J. F. Ritt lies; :He never won the
Bôcher prize. Ritt died January 5, 1951. He was buried in
Mount Zion Cemetery; his grave does not bear the epitaph that he composed. ==Selected works==