Solomon Lefschetz
Russian-born American topologist (1884–1972), longtime chair of Princeton's mathematics department, who personally brought American scholars — including von Neumann and Albert Tucker — to a 1935 Moscow topology conference.
Matters to this vault as the named, favorably-disposed American champion of Pontryagin's work: per Boldyrev (2024), Lefschetz "would actively promote Pontryagin's work in the US mathematical community" in the postwar years, making him the concrete counter-evidence against any hypothesis that Pontryagin's politics or reputation caused Western mathematicians to shun his mathematics.
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