Selected Papers

From the Introduction: " Marston Morse was born in 1892, so that he was 33 yearsold when in 1925 his paper Relations between the critical points of a real-valuedfunction of n independent variables appeared in the Transactions of theAmerican Mathematical Society. Thus Morse grew to maturity just at thetime when the subject of Analysis Situs was being shaped by such masters asPoincaré, Veblen, L. E. J. Brouwer, G. D. Birkhoff, Lefschetz and Alexander,and it was Morse's genius and destiny to discover one of the most beautifuland far-reaching relations between this fledgling and Analysis; a relationwhich is now known as Morse Theory.In retrospect all great ideas take on a certain simplicity and inevitability,partly because they shape the whole subsequent development of the subject.And so to us, today, Morse Theory seems natural and inevitable.This whole flight of ideas was of course acclaimed by the mathematicalWorld?it eventually earned him practicallyevery honor of the mathematical community,over twenty honorary degrees, the National Science Medal, theLegion of Honor of France, ..."