William "Art" Kirk

William “Art” Kirk, 86, of Iowa City, died on Thursday, October 20, 2022 at Mercy Hospital, Iowa City, with his family by his side.

William was born on October 3, 1936 in Montour Falls, New York, the son of Alpha Girton and Olive Ione (Andrews) Kirk.

Art attended Depauw University and graduated in 1958. He completed graduate school at the University of Missouri, where he received in 1962 a Ph.D. in Mathematics. Subsequently he became Assistant Professor at the University of California, Riverside, where he taught until 1967. In the same year he joined the faculty at the University of Iowa in the department of Mathematics as an Associate Professor. He was promoted to Professor in 1970 and between 1985-1991 he served as chair of the department. In 2012 he formerly retired as Professor Emeritus. He supervised 19 Ph.D. students and mentored numerous post-graduate students.

Professor Kirk was internationally renowned as one of the founders of the modern theory of metric fixed-point theory. He influenced the development of the field decisively. The Kirk Theorem of 1964/65 was published in the paper titled,” A fixed-point theorem for mappings which do not increase distances” was published in the American Mathematics Monthly in 1965. Professor Kirk’s later publications include three books and 177 journal articles. His first book co-authored with Kaz Goebel was Topics in Metric Fixed Point Theory, was published by Cambridge University Press in 1990; this book is widely considered as a classic in the subject. Academic reference works list over 5,000 citations by 2,000 researchers. Research.com named him as the best scientist of the field of mathematics. In 2004, Art received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from Marie Curie-Sklodowska University (Lublin, Poland) which was an early center of study for the first fixed-point theory of metric spaces. As Professor Emeritus, Art read his last plenary address at the 11th International Conference on Fixed-Point Theory and Its Applications on July 24, 2015 at Istanbul, Turkey. The following journals - Journal of Nonlinear and Convex Analysis (JNCA), and Fixed-Point Theory and Algorithms for Sciences and Engineering (FPTASE)- will publish special issues to honor the memories of William A. Kirk and Kaz Goebel.

William is survived by his wife Elizabeth A. McCartney; his children, Philip (Diana) Kirk, Malia (Whit) Lovelace and Brian (Tanner) Kirk; two grandchildren, Nicholas and Alexander Lovelace; his brother, Kenneth L. (Marion) Kirk and his aunt Rose Marie Pell.

He was preceded in death by his parents and former spouse Ruth Komuro Kehoe.

Online condolences and memories may be shared on Art's Tribute Wall.