Schoenfeld received his Ph.D. in 1944 from
University of Pennsylvania under the direction of
Hans Rademacher. In 1953, as an assistant professor at the
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he married (as his second wife) associate professor
Josephine M. Mitchell, causing the university to fire her from her
tenured position under its anti-nepotism rules while allowing him to keep his more junior tenure-track job. They both resigned in protest, and after several short-term positions they were both able to obtain faculty positions at
Pennsylvania State University in 1958. They were both promoted to full professor in 1961, and moved to the
University at Buffalo in 1968. ==Contributions==