william buhmann johnson (born december 5, 1944) is an american mathematician, one of the namesakes of the johnson–lindenstrauss lemma. he is distinguished professor and a.g. & m.e. owen chair of mathematics at texas a&m university. his research specialties include the theory of banach spaces, nonlinear functional analysis, and probability theory. he was born in palo alto, california and raised from an early age in dallas, texas.