Kenneth May was an American mathematician.
May was an ardent Communist in Berkeley who was also part of the intellectual community formed by many of the left-leaning physics students at the Radiation Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. May himself was studying Mathematics at the time. J. Robert Oppenheimer and many of the Berkeley physicists considered May to be a close friend. This connection would prove to be damning when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began looking into Berkeley as a hub for Communist activity. May himself was eventually forced to leave the country in order to continue teaching. He settled in Canada and continued a life of activism, protesting the Vietnam War and supporting Communist causes until his death in 1977.