Walther Mayer (11 March 1887 – 10 September 1948) was an Austrian mathematician, born in Graz, Austria-Hungary.
[5][6] He served in the military between 1914 and 1919, during which he found time to complete a habilitation on differential geometry.
[5] Because he was Jewish, he had little opportunity for an academic career in Austria, and left the country; however, in 1926, with help from Einstein, he returned to a position at the University of Vienna as Privatdozent (lecturer).
[7] He made a name for himself in topology with the Mayer–Vietoris sequence,[2] and with an axiomatic treatment of homology predating the Eilenberg–Steenrod axioms.
[1] In 1933, after Hitler's assumption of power, he followed Einstein to the United States and became an associate in mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.