Contact:	Bob Nelson					For immediate release
		(212) 854-6580					February 2, 1998
		rjn2@columbia.edu



Samuel Eilenberg, Columbia Mathematician
And Art Collector, Dies at 84


	Samuel Eilenberg of Columbia University, one of the world's leading 
mathematicians and a legendary collector of South Asian art, died Friday (Jan. 
30, 1998) in the Isabella Geriatric Center in New York City.  He was 84.
	The cause of death was cardiac arrest after multiple strokes, said his friend 
and executor Leon Polsky.
	Dr. Eilenberg was University Professor Emeritus at Columbia, where he 
had taught for more than 35 years.  His work created a new discipline of 
mathematics, algebraic topology, the use of algebra to describe and understand 
how certain properties of multidimensional forms - such as the number of holes 
punched through the surface - remain unchanged even when the forms are 
twisted, bent or stretched.  He was a member of the Bourbaki, a French 
mathematical society dating to 1935 whose members published under the 
pseudonym Nicolas Bourbaki and undertook, with varying success, to publish 
treatises that would codify all branches of mathematics.
	"Sammy was at the forefront of a movement to take abstraction into fields 
where it was unknown or poorly applied," said John Morgan, professor of 
mathematics at Columbia.  "He fit in well with the Bourbaki, because both he and 
they were trying to lay the foundations for new disciplines."
	He is best known for his collaborations with other distinguished 
mathematicians.  With Norman Steenrod in the 1940's, he made sense of a 
tangled branch of mathematics called homology theory, the study of objects that
can be manipulated with algebra.  The Eilenberg-Steenrod Axioms for Homology 
clarified the subject by setting forth four simple properties that could be used to 
discern when a possibly exotic homology theory was in fact the same as the usual 
one.  Their book, "Foundations of Algebraic Topology," published in 1952, is still in 
print.
	He then worked with Henri Cartan to further develop these ideas and 
founded an area still very much in use today called homological algebra.  His 
longest-running collaboration was with Saunders MacLane.  Together they 
studied a variety of topics in algebraic topology and invented category theory, 
ubiquitous in modern mathematics.
	Born in Warsaw in 1913, Professor Eilenberg received the Ph.D. from 
Warsaw University.  He came to the United States in 1939 and to the Columbia 
faculty in 1947.  He was twice chairman of the mathematics department and in 
1974 was named to Columbia's highest rank, University Professor.  He became an 
emeritus professor in 1982, but remained active in campus life and research.  The 
Wolf Foundation in Israel awarded him its Prize in Mathematics in 1986 for his 
work in algebraic topology and homological algebra.
	Professor Eilenberg became interested in art collecting on a trip to Bombay 
in the mid-1950's and pursued Asian art partly to relieve his mind of the rigors of 
math, Mr. Polsky said.  "He said, I have to have something new and different to 
keep me going," Mr. Polsky said.  "He developed this interest in Indonesian and 
South Asian art and artifacts, and on a professor's salary he created one of the 
greatest such collections ever amassed."
	His collection, valued at more than $5 million and acquired over 30 years, 
included art of Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Thailand, Cambodia, Sri 
Lanka and Central Asia dating from the 3rd century B.C. to the 17th century.  It 
included the finest private collection of Javanese bronze sculptures in the world, 
as well as portable shrines and other small articles from Pakistan.  Very fine 
bronzes from all parts of India and early bronzes and stone sculpture from Nepal, 
Sri Lanka, Thailand and Cambodia are in the collection.
	In 1989, he donated more than 400 valuable sculptures to the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art.  In turn, the Metropolitan raised, through general funds and 
with contributions by others, most of the $1.5 million needed to create the Samuel
Eilenberg Visiting Professorship of Mathematics at Columbia.  The collection, 
shown to the public in 1992 as "The Lotus Transcendent," was described by 
Holland Cotter in the New York Times as "one of New York's hidden treasures."  
Items from Professor Eilenberg's collection may also be found in the British 
Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Brooklyn Museum.
	Professor Eilenberg is survived by several cousins.  A Columbia memorial 
service is being planned.

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