James Edward Humphreys (December 10, 1939 – August 27, 2020) was an American mathematician who worked in algebraic groups, Lie groups, and Lie algebras and applications of these mathematical structures.
[2] After contracting COVID-19 weeks earlier during the COVID-19 pandemic in Massachusetts, Humphreys died on August 27, 2020, at the age of 80.
[3] Humphreys attended elementary and secondary school in Erie, Pennsylvania and then studied at Oberlin College (bachelor's degree 1961) and from 1961 philosophy and mathematics at Cornell University.
At Yale University he earned his master's degree in 1964 and his PhD in 1966 under George Seligman with thesis Algebraic Lie Algebras over fields of prime characteristic.
Humphreys received the Lester R. Ford Award for the publication Representations of