Thomas W. Hawkins Jr. (born 10 January 1938 in

Flushing, New York Flushing is a neighborhood in the north-central portion of the New York City borough of Queens. The neighborhood is the fourth-largest central business district in New York City. Downtown Flushing is a major commercial and retail area, and the ...

) is an American

historian of mathematics The history of mathematics deals with the origin of discoveries in mathematics and the History of mathematical notation, mathematical methods and notation of the past. Before the modern age and the worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples ...

. Hawkins defended his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

thesis on ''"The Origins and Early Development of Lebesgue's Theory of Integration"'' at the

University of Wisconsin-Madison A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

in 1968 under

Robert Creighton Buck Robert Creighton Buck (30 August 1920 Cincinnati – 1 February 1998 Wisconsin), usually cited as R. Creighton Buck, was an American mathematician who, with Ralph Boas, introduced Boas–Buck polynomials. He taught at University of Wisconsin&ndas ...

. Since 1972 he has been based at

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...

. Hawkins was an

invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians An invitation system is a method of encouraging people to join an organization, such as a Club (organization), club or a website. In regular society, it refers to any system whereby new members are chosen; they cannot simply apply. In relation to w ...

in 1974 at

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

and in 1986 at

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California *George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer to ...

. In 1997 Hawkins was awarded the

Chauvenet Prize The Chauvenet Prize is an annual award given by the Mathematical Association of America in recognition of an outstanding expository article on a mathematical topic. It consists of a prize of $1,000 and a certificate. The Chauvenet Prize was the ...

for his article ''"The birth of Lie's theory of

groups A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together. Groups of people * Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity * Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic iden ...

"'', published in the

Mathematical Intelligencer ''The Mathematical Intelligencer'' is a mathematical journal published by Springer Science+Business Media that aims at a conversational and scholarly tone, rather than the technical and specialist tone more common among academic journals. Volumes ...

in 1994. In fall 2012 Hawkins was elected a Fellow 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, ...

Selected publications

Articles

* 1970: "The origins of the theory of group characters", ''

Archive for History of Exact Sciences ''Archive for History of Exact Sciences'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal currently published bimonthly by Springer Science+Business Media, covering the history of mathematics and of astronomy observations and techniques, epistemology of scien ...

'', 7: 142–170 * 1972: "Hypercomplex numbers, Lie groups and the creation of group representation theory", ''Archive for History of Exact Sciences'' 8: 243–287. * 1974: "The Theory of Matrices in the 19th Century", In: Ralph D. James (editor): ''Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, Vancouver, 1974''. CMC, Vancouver 1975, vol. 2, , pp. 561–570. * 1974: "New light on Frobenius creation of the theory of group characters", ''Archive for History of Exact Sciences'', 12: 217–243. * 1980: "Non-euclidean geometry and Weierstrassian mathematics. The background to Killing's work on Lie algebras", ''

Historia Mathematica ''Historia Mathematica: International Journal of History of Mathematics'' is an academic journal on the history of mathematics published by Elsevier. It was established by Kenneth O. May in 1971 as the free newsletter ''Notae de Historia Mathemat ...

'' 7: 289–342. * 1982: "Wilhelm Killing and the structure of Lie algebras", ''Archive for History of Exact Sciences'' 26: 126–192

Books

''Emergence of the theory of Lie groups. An Essay in the history of Mathematics 1869-1926''
(Sources and studies in the history of mathematics and physical series). Springer Verlag, New York 2000, . * ''Lebesgue's Theory of Integration. Its Origin and Development''. 2nd edition. AMS Chelsea Books, New York 1979, ; reprint with corrections of original edition published by University of Wisconsin Press 1970;

Springer, New York 2013, .

References

1938 births University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Boston University faculty American historians of mathematics Living people Fellows of the American Mathematical Society {{US-sci-historian-stub