Ed 'the trouble maker' Spruiell.
Milnor. Isn't that a coincidence Racer? A Professor at Stony Brook and the New Yoka asking.
Milnor is a pretty hep cat. Not just an incombustible obscure Mathematician, or a mysterious pc naming convention. Actually an important person to you, I think Racer. The father of differential topology. Your passion.
Look at some of his accomplishments, gents...
-was awarded a Fields Medal at the 1962 International Congress of Mathematicians in Stockholm based on his work which gave proof that a 7-dimensional sphere can have several differential structures. This work opened up the new field of differential topology. Ahem!
-received the National Medal of Science in 1967 and was elected a member of the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Science
-he's a member of the American Philosophy Society (Ed, did you catch that?) and has played a major role in the American Mathematical Society.
-In August 1982 he received the Leroy P Steele Prize
-and was awarded the Wolf Prize in 1989
Not a slouch.
Is this the differential topology guru we spoke of once (the NY Stony Brook convo at Ed's place)? He looks like a fellow I could like. Maybe it's his 60's vibe. Just browsing over some of his work and stumbled over his tentative contents of Essays on Complexity. Seems like it would make an excellent read for me. I was surprised to see subjects on humanity Ed.
Then I found
this, which I personally thought was cool. Some months ago I was researching quadrature circuits for coordinate tracking and Milnor shows biquadratic maps in Window [.1, .10001] X [.4024, .40241] of "Pictures of Non-Landing Stretching Rays". I found myself going over the waveform patterns looking for matches with the waveforms I was working with and his.
Was that posted jpeg a rework of your OS site? Looks very slick so far.