Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Thomason did his undergraduate studies at Michigan State University, graduating with a B.S. in mathematics in 1973. He completed his Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1977, under the supervision of John Moore.[2] According to Charles Weibel,[3] Thomason proved the equivalence of all infinite loop space machines in June 1977. He was just a 24 years old graduate student at the time; he published this result the year after in a joint paper with John Peter May.
Thomason's most influential work is a joint paper[5]
with Thomas Trobaugh, even though Trobaugh had died by the time this paper was written. According to Weibel,[3] "On January 22, 1988, [Thomason] had a dream in which Thomas Trobaugh, who had passed away recently, told him how to solve the [most difficult] final step. [..] In gratitude [Thomason] listed his friend as a coauthor of the resulting paper." Among the many results of this paper are construction of the K-theory spectrum for the category of perfect complexes of coherent sheaves on a scheme, and the proof for localization theorems in algebraic K-theory which include the case of non-regular schemes (Theorem 2.1). Thomason also proved Mayer–Vietoris-type theorem for algebraic K-theory of schemes. Following the publication of his paper with Trobaugh, Thomason was invited to give an invited talk at the 1990 International Congress of Mathematicians in Kyoto.[6]
Thomason suffered from diabetes; in early November 1995, just shy of his 43rd birthday, he went into diabetic shock and died in his apartment in Paris.[3]
Thomason, Robert W.; Trobaugh, Thomas (1990), "Higher Algebraic K-Theory of Schemes and of Derived Categories", The Grothendieck Festschrift Volume III, Progr. Math., vol. 88, Boston, MA: Birkhäuser Boston, pp. 247–435, doi:10.1007/978-0-8176-4576-2_10, ISBN978-0-8176-3487-2, MR1106918
^Thomason, Robert W.; Trobaugh, Thomas (1990), "Higher Algebraic K-Theory of Schemes and of Derived Categories", The Grothendieck Festschrift Volume III, Progress in Mathematics, vol. 88, Boston, MA: Birkhäuser, pp. 247–435, doi:10.1007/978-0-8176-4576-2_10, ISBN978-0-8176-3487-2, MR1106918
Snaith, Victor (1997), "Robert Wayne Thomason. 1952–1995", Algebraic K-theory (Toronto, ON, 1996), Fields Institute Communications, vol. 16, Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society, pp. ix–xiii, MR1466969