James Harkness (1864–1923) was a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, born in

Derby Derby ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area on the River Derwent, Derbyshire, River Derwent in Derbyshire, England. Derbyshire is named after Derby, which was its original co ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

, and educated at

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...

with a B.A. in 1885 and an M.A. in 1889. Coming early to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, he was connected with

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh language, Welsh: ) is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as a ...

from 1888 to 1903, for the last seven years as

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

. :Harkness complemented Scott with a course on "Abelian Integrals and Functions" that also drew on the latest literature in German — the work of

Alfred Clebsch Rudolf Friedrich Alfred Clebsch (19 January 1833 – 7 November 1872) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to algebraic geometry and invariant theory. He attended the University of Königsberg and was habilitated at Humboldt ...

and

Paul Gordan Paul Albert Gordan (27 April 1837 – 21 December 1912) was a German mathematician known for work in invariant theory and for the Clebsch–Gordan coefficients and Gordan's lemma. He was called "the king of invariant theory". His most famous ...

Bernhard Riemann Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (; ; 17September 182620July 1866) was a German mathematician who made profound contributions to analysis, number theory, and differential geometry. In the field of real analysis, he is mostly known for the f ...

, Hermann Amandus Schwarz and others — and "aimed to prepare the students for the recent Memoirs of

Felix Klein Felix Christian Klein (; ; 25 April 1849 – 22 June 1925) was a German mathematician and Mathematics education, mathematics educator, known for his work in group theory, complex analysis, non-Euclidean geometry, and the associations betwe ...

in the ''Mathematische Annalen''". In 1903, he was appointed Peter Redpath professor of pure mathematics at

McGill University McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

, Quebec. Harkness was for a time a vice president of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

and associate editor of its '' Transactions'', was elected a member of the

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's Learned society, learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh ...

and in 1908 became a fellow of the

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; , SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bilingual council of distinguishe ...

. He published, with Professor Frank Morley, two treatises on the ''Theory of Functions'' and collaborated on the article "Elliptic Functions", in the ''German Encyclopædia of Mathematics'' (1914–15).

References

External links

* Frank Morley and James Harknes
A treatise on the theory of functions
(New York: Macmillan, 1893) * Frank Morley and James Harknes
Introduction To The Theory of Analytic Functions
(G.E.Stechert And Company, 1898) {{DEFAULTSORT:Harkness, James Canadian mathematicians Canadian science writers Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Bryn Mawr College faculty Academic staff of McGill University People from Derby 1864 births 1923 deaths British emigrants Immigrants to the United States Immigrants to Canada