Mellen Woodman Haskell (March 17, 1863 – January 15, 1948) was an American

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, structure, space, models, and change. History O ...

, specializing in

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is ...

group theory In abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as groups. The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as rings, fields, and vector spaces, can all be seen as ...

, and applications of group theory to geometry.

Education and career

After secondary education at

Roxbury Latin School The Roxbury Latin School is a private boys' day school that was founded in 1645 in the town of Roxbury, Massachusetts, Roxbury (now a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts) by the Rev. John Eliot (missionary), John Eliot under a charter rec ...

, he received in 1883 his bachelor's degree and in 1885 his

M.A. A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. ...

and a Parker Traveling Fellowship from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. From 1885 to 1889 he studied mathematics at the University of Leipzig and the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded i ...

, where in 1889 he received, under

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

, his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

(Promotierung). In 1889 Haskell became an instructor at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

. At the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

, he became in 1890 an assistant professor, in 1894 an associate professor, and in 1906 a full professor. In 1909 he became the chair of U. C. Berkeley's mathematics department in succession to

Irving Stringham Washington Irving Stringham (December 10, 1847 – October 5, 1909) was an American mathematician born in Yorkshire, New York. He was the first person to denote the natural logarithm as \ln(x) where x is its argument. The use of \ln(x) in place o ...

, and remained the chair until retiring as professor emeritus in 1933. Haskell was an Invited Speaker of the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be renam ...

in 1924 in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anchor ...

and in 1928 in Bologna.

Selected publications

* 1890: "Ueber die zu der Curve λ3μ+ μ3ν+ μ3λ= 0 im projectiven Sinne gehörende mehrfache Ueberdeckung der Ebene",

American Journal of Mathematics The ''American Journal of Mathematics'' is a bimonthly mathematics journal published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. History The ''American Journal of Mathematics'' is the oldest continuously published mathematical journal in the United S ...

: 1–52. * 1892: "Note on resultants",

Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society The ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'' is a quarterly mathematical journal published by the American Mathematical Society. Scope It publishes surveys on contemporary research topics, written at a level accessible to non-experts. I ...

1: 223–224. * 1893: "On the definition of logarithms", ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'' 2: 164–167. * 1895
On the introduction of the notion of hyperbolic functions
''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'' 1: 155–159, from

Project Euclid Project Euclid is a collaborative partnership between Cornell University Library and Duke University Press which seeks to advance scholarly communication in theoretical and applied mathematics and statistics through partnerships with independent an ...

* 1903
"On a Certain Rational Cubic Transformation in Space"

The American Mathematical Monthly ''The American Mathematical Monthly'' is a mathematical journal founded by Benjamin Finkel in 1894. It is published ten times each year by Taylor & Francis for the Mathematical Association of America. The ''American Mathematical Monthly'' is an e ...

10(1): 1–3. * 1903
"Generalization of a Fundamental Theorem in the Geometry of the Triangle"
''The American Mathematical Monthly'' 10(2): 30–33. * 1905: "The construction of conics under given conditions", ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'' 11: 268–273. * 1906: "The resolution of any collineation into perspective reflections",

Transactions of the American Mathematical Society The ''Transactions of the American Mathematical Society'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of mathematics published by the American Mathematical Society. It was established in 1900. As a requirement, all articles must be more than 15 ...

7: 361–369. * 1917: "The maximum number of cusps of an algebraic plane curve, and enumeration of self-dual curves", ''

'' 23: 164–165.

As translator

* 1893:

,
A comparative review of recent researches in geometry
, ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'' 2: 215–249, from Project Euclid (See also

Erlangen program In mathematics, the Erlangen program is a method of characterizing geometries based on group theory and projective geometry. It was published by Felix Klein in 1872 as ''Vergleichende Betrachtungen über neuere geometrische Forschungen.'' It is nam ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Haskell, Mellen Woodman 1863 births 1948 deaths 19th-century American mathematicians 20th-century American mathematicians Harvard University alumni University of Göttingen alumni University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty People from Salem, Massachusetts Roxbury Latin School alumni Mathematicians from Massachusetts