Stone was the son of
Harlan Fiske Stone, who was the
Chief Justice of the United States in 1941–1946. Marshall Stone's family expected him to become a lawyer like his father, but he became enamored of mathematics while he was an undergraduate at
Harvard University, where he was a classmate of future judge
Henry Friendly. He completed a
PhD there in 1926, with a thesis on
differential equations that was supervised by
George David Birkhoff. Between 1925 and 1937, he taught at Harvard,
Yale University, and
Columbia University. Stone was promoted to a full professor at Harvard in 1937. During
World War II, Stone did classified research as part of the "Office of Naval Operations" and the "Office of the Chief of Staff" of the
United States Department of War. In 1946, he became the chairman of the Mathematics Department at the
University of Chicago, a position that he held until 1952. While chairman, Stone hired several notable mathematicians including
Paul Halmos,
André Weil,
Saunders Mac Lane,
Antoni Zygmund, and
Shiing-Shen Chern. He remained on the faculty at this university until 1968, after which he taught at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst until 1980. In 1989, Stone died in
Madras, India (now referred to as Chennai), due to a stroke. Following his death, many mathematicians praised Stone for his contributions to various mathematical fields. For instance, University of Massachusetts Amherst mathematician Larry Mann claimed that "Professor Stone was one of the greatest American mathematicians of this century," while Mac Lane described how Stone made the University of Chicago mathematics department the "best department in mathematics in the country in that period." ==Accomplishments==