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William Bigelow Easton is the full name of the American mathematician who is the eponym of Easton's theorem, a far-reaching application of the method of forcing in set theory.

Despite the many citations of this celebrated result, I can't find much information about the man. The extent of what I know can be found in the German Wikipedia, which attests to the paucity of his publications, and mentions that he taught computer science at Rutgers in the early 70's. He earned his PhD at Princeton in 1964, under the supervision of Alonzo Church.

I can't determine from Google any other details of his life, such as the year of his birth or whether he's still alive. Is any of this recorded somewhere?

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I like these things as a private investigator. When I was young, I used to watch Magnum, P.I. (I'll explain why later).

William Bigelow Easton, born in Norfolk, Virginia (USA) on March 8, 1939 to William Thomas Easton and Helen "Manoa" Bigelow; he is currently still alive and resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.

In gathering information, I couldn't help but notice similarities with the hero of my youth, Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV, who lived in Virginia and was the son of a naval officer.

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    $\begingroup$ Thank you! Not to deprive you of credit, but I also discovered this myself after the lead provided by Dave Renfro, and from what I can tell poking around, Dr. Easton seems to be a lovely gentleman. :-) $\endgroup$
    – Todd Trimble
    Commented May 5 at 2:16
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    $\begingroup$ @ToddTrimble You're welcome! Not to take away credit from Dave Renfro, but I had already found the relevant data before reading his comment; I wrote the response anyway, both for the "officiality" and to joke about Thomas Magnum. $\endgroup$
    – M. Lonardi
    Commented May 5 at 10:26
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    $\begingroup$ Great! Do you have any tips to share for how you got this? (I guess some P.I.s might like to keep their methods P.) $\endgroup$
    – Todd Trimble
    Commented May 5 at 11:56
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William "Bill" Bigelow Easton is my father in law. He is a stellar human being and a really good guy. On top of being a genius mathematician, he has an amazing voice and sang for decades with multiple choirs. The amazing stories that he can tell you about people that he knows and the things that he has done are endless. Bill has traveled to Haiti numerous times to install solar and generators medical at hospitals and clinics from Cap Haitian to Jacmel.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you! I'm glad to learn of this. $\endgroup$
    – Todd Trimble
    Commented 2 days ago

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