Leonidas (Leon) Alaoglu (Greek: Λεωνίδας Αλάογλου; March 19, 1914 – August 1981) was a mathematician best known for Alaoglu's theorem on the weak-star compactness of the closed unit ball in the dual of a normed space, also known as the Banach–Alaoglu theorem.
[1] Alaoglu was born in Red Deer, Alberta to Greek parents.
He received his BS in 1936, Master's in 1937, and PhD in 1938 (at the age of 24), all from the University of Chicago.
His dissertation, written under the direction of Lawrence M. Graves, was on Weak topologies of normed linear spaces and establishes Alaoglu's theorem.
After his death in 1981, a Leonidas Alaoglu Memorial Lecture Series Archived 2020-08-06 at the Wayback Machine was established at Caltech.