Joel Alan Smoller (2 January 1936 – 27 September 2017) was an American mathematician.
Joel Smoller was born in Brooklyn on 2 January 1936 to parents Benjamin, a taxicab driver, and Olga, who died when he was young.[1][2] Smoller attended New York University, and completed his doctoral work at Purdue University in 1963, after which he taught at the University of Michigan. In 1970, he was appointed a full professor, and assumed the Lamberto Cesari Collegiate Professorship of Mathematics in 1998.[1][2] He was editor of Transactions of the American Mathematical Society from 1981 to 1985, and later the Journal for Applicable Analysis.[3] Smoller was award a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979,[4] the George David Birkhoff Prize in 2009,[1] and elected to fellowship of the American Mathematical Society in 2013, a member of its inaugural class of fellows.[5] Smoller retired in June 2017, and died, aged 81, on 27 September 2017.[1][2] Following his death, the Joel Smoller Graduate Fellowship was established.[6]