William Schumacher Massey (August 23, 1920[1] – June 17, 2017) was an American mathematician, known for his work in algebraic topology.
He worked also on the formulation of spectral sequences by means of exact couples, and wrote several textbooks, including A Basic Course in Algebraic Topology (ISBN 0-387-97430-X).
After serving as a meteorologist aboard aircraft carriers in the United States Navy for 4 years during World War II, he received a Ph.D. degree from Princeton University in 1949.
He spent two additional years at Princeton as a post-doctoral research assistant.
He had 23 PhD students, including Donald Kahn, Larry Smith, and Robert Greenblatt.