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Perkins Professorship Of Astronomy And Mathematics
The Perkins Professorship of Astronomy and Mathematics is an endowed professorship established at Harvard College in 1842 by James Perkins, Jr., (1761–1822). History of the Perkins Chair James Perkins, Jr., was a Boston philanthropist, benefactor of the Boston Athenæum, and co-founder with his younger brother Thomas Handasyd Perkins of the Perkins School for the Blind. In his will, Perkins left $20,000 to Harvard College(10 August 1822)The late James Perkins, Esq. ''New-York Evening Post'', p. 2, col. 3-5 (Perkins obituary reprinted from the ''Boston Daily Advertiser'') to establish a chair in "whatever field the President and Fellows should find the most useful".William Bentinck-Smith and Elizabeth Stouffe, Harvard University History of Named Chairs. ''Sketches of Donors and Donations. University Professorships and Those of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. 1721--1991'', Cambridge: Secretary of the University, 1991 The funds were transferred to Harvard on February 20, 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Financial Endowment
A financial endowment is a legal structure for managing, and in many cases indefinitely perpetuating, a pool of financial, real estate, or other investments for a specific purpose according to the will of its founders and donors. Endowments are often structured so that the inflation-adjusted principal or "corpus" value is kept intact, while a portion of the fund can be (and in some cases must be) spent each year, utilizing a prudent spending policy. Endowments are often governed and managed either as a nonprofit corporation, a charitable foundation, or a private foundation that, while serving a good cause, might not qualify as a public charity. In some jurisdictions, it is common for endowed funds to be established as a trust independent of the organizations and the causes the endowment is meant to serve. Institutions that commonly manage endowments include academic institutions (e.g., colleges, universities, and private schools); cultural institutions (e.g., museums, librar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Mills Peirce
James Mills Peirce (May 1, 1834 – March 21, 1906) was an American mathematician and educator. He taught at Harvard University for almost 50 years. Early life and family He was the eldest son of Sarah Hunt (Mills) Peirce and Benjamin Peirce (1809–1880), a professor of astronomy and mathematics at Harvard University. The family was considered part of the Boston Brahmin elite class. The surname is pronounced to rhyme with "". Benjamin Peirce's father, also named Benjamin, was librarian at Harvard. James had four younger siblings; one brother was philosopher, logician and professor Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914). Another brother was Herbert Henry Davis Peirce (1849–1916) who was the First Secretary of the American Embassy in Saint Petersburg, Russia, at the end of the 19th century. J. M. Peirce graduated from Harvard College in 1853. While an undergraduate at Harvard, he was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club. He attended Harvard's law school for one year. In 1857 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Professorships At Harvard University
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors are usually experts in their field and teachers of the highest rank. In most systems of academic ranks, "professor" as an unqualified title refers only to the most senior academic position, sometimes informally known as "full professor". In some countries and institutions, the word "professor" is also used in titles of lower ranks such as associate professor and assistant professor; this is particularly the case in the United States, where the unqualified word is also used colloquially to refer to associate and assistant professors as well. This usage would be considered incorrect among other academic communities. However, the otherwise unqualified title "Professor" designated with a capital letter nearly always refers to a full professor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Kisin
Mark Kisin is a mathematician known for work in algebraic number theory and arithmetic geometry. In particular, he is known for his contributions to the study of p-adic representations and p-adic cohomology. Born in Vilnius, Lithuania and raised from the age of five in Melbourne, Australia, he won a silver medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad in 1989 and received his B.Sc. from Monash University in 1991. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1998 under the direction of Nick Katz. From 1998 to 2001 he was a Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, after which he spent three years at the University of Münster. After six years at the University of Chicago, Kisin took the post in 2009 of professor of mathematics at Harvard University. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2008. He gave an invited talk at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2010, on the topic of "Number Theory". In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Kazhdan
David Kazhdan ( he, דוד קשדן), born Dmitry Aleksandrovich Kazhdan (russian: Дми́трий Александро́вич Кажда́н), is a Soviet and Israeli mathematician known for work in representation theory. Kazhdan is a 1990 MacArthur Fellow. Biography Kazhdan was born on 20 June 1946 in Moscow, USSR. His father is Alexander Kazhdan. He earned a doctorate under Alexandre Kirillov in 1969 and was a member of Israel Gelfand's school of mathematics. He is Jewish, and emigrated from the Soviet Union to take a position at Harvard University in 1975. He changed his name from Dmitri Aleksandrovich to David and became an Orthodox Jew around that time. In 2002, he immigrated to Israel and is now a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as well as a professor emeritus at Harvard. On October 6, 2013, Kazhdan was critically injured in a car accident while riding a bicycle in Jerusalem. Kazhdan has four children. His son, Eli Kazhdan, was general director of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Tate (mathematician)
John Torrence Tate Jr. (March 13, 1925 – October 16, 2019) was an American mathematician, distinguished for many fundamental contributions in algebraic number theory, arithmetic geometry and related areas in algebraic geometry. He was awarded the Abel Prize in 2010. Biography Tate was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father, John Tate Sr., was a professor of physics at the University of Minnesota, and a longtime editor of ''Physical Review''. His mother, Lois Beatrice Fossler, was a high school English teacher. Tate Jr. received his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1946 from Harvard University, and entered the doctoral program in physics at Princeton University. He later transferred to the mathematics department and received his PhD in mathematics in 1950 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "Fourier analysis in number fields and Hecke's zeta functions", under the supervision of Emil Artin. Tate taught at Harvard for 36 years before joining the Univer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Dagobert Brauer
Richard Dagobert Brauer (February 10, 1901 – April 17, 1977) was a leading German and American mathematician. He worked mainly in abstract algebra, but made important contributions to number theory. He was the founder of modular representation theory. Education and career Alfred Brauer was Richard's brother and seven years older. They were born to a Jewish family. Both were interested in science and mathematics, but Alfred was injured in combat in World War I. As a boy, Richard dreamt of becoming an inventor, and in February 1919 enrolled in Technische Hochschule Berlin-Charlottenburg. He soon transferred to University of Berlin. Except for the summer of 1920 when he studied at University of Freiburg, he studied in Berlin, being awarded his PhD on 16 March 1926. Issai Schur conducted a seminar and posed a problem in 1921 that Alfred and Richard worked on together, and published a result. The problem also was solved by Heinz Hopf at the same time. Richard wrote his thesis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Leonard Walsh
__NOTOC__ Joseph Leonard Walsh (September 21, 1895 – December 6, 1973) was an American mathematician who worked mainly in the field of analysis. The Walsh function and the Walsh–Hadamard code are named after him. The Grace–Walsh–Szegő coincidence theorem is important in the study of the location of the zeros of multivariate polynomials. He became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1936 and served 1949–51 as president of the American Mathematical Society. Altogether he published 279 articles (research and others) and seven books, and advised 31 PhD students. For most of his professional career he studied and worked at Harvard University. He received a B.S. in 1916 and a PhD in 1920. The Advisor of his PhD was Maxime Bôcher. Walsh started to work as lecturer in Harvard afterwards and became a full professor in 1935. He was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1920 at Strasbourg. With two different scholarships he was able to study in Paris under Paul Montel ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George David Birkhoff
George David Birkhoff (March 21, 1884 – November 12, 1944) was an American mathematician best known for what is now called the ergodic theorem. Birkhoff was one of the most important leaders in American mathematics in his generation, and during his time he was considered by many to be the preeminent American mathematician. The George D. Birkhoff House, his residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been designated a National Historic Landmark. Personal life He was born in Overisel Township, Michigan, the son of David Birkhoff and Jane Gertrude Droppers. The mathematician Garrett Birkhoff (1911–1996) was his son. Career Birkhoff obtained his A.B. and A.M. from Harvard University. He completed his Ph.D. in 1907, on differential equations, at the University of Chicago. While E. H. Moore was his supervisor, he was most influenced by the writings of Henri Poincaré. After teaching at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Princeton University, he taught at Harvard from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Fogg Osgood
William Fogg Osgood (March 10, 1864, Boston – July 22, 1943, Belmont, Massachusetts) was an American mathematician. Education and career In 1886, he graduated from Harvard, where, after studying at the universities of Göttingen (1887–1889) and Erlangen ( Ph.D., 1890), he was instructor (1890–1893), assistant professor (1893–1903), and thenceforth professor of mathematics. From 1918 to 1922, he was chairman of the department of mathematics at Harvard. He became professor emeritus in 1933. From 1934 to 1936, he was visiting professor of mathematics at Peking University. From 1899 to 1902, he served as editor of the ''Annals of Mathematics'', and in 1905–1906 was president of the American Mathematical Society, whose ''Transactions'' he edited in 1909–1910. Contributions The works of Osgood dealt with complex analysis, in particular conformal mapping and uniformization of analytic functions, and calculus of variations. He was invited by Felix Klein to write an articl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Elwood Byerly
William Elwood Byerly (13 December 1849 – 20 December 1935) was an American mathematician at Harvard University where he was the "Perkins Professor of Mathematics". He was noted for his excellent teaching and textbooks. Byerly was the first to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard, and Harvard's chair "William Elwood Byerly Professor in Mathematics" is named after him. Byerly Hall in Radcliffe Yard, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University is also named for him. Textbooks Among the textbooks he wrote are: * ''Elements of the Differential Calculus'' (1879) * ''Harmonic Functions'' (1906) * ''Problems in Differential Calculus'' * ''Introduction to the Calculus of Variations'' (1917) * ''Elements of the Integral Calculus'' (1881) * ''An Elementary Treatise on Fourier's Series'' (1893) * ''An Introduction to the Use of Generalized Coordinates in Mechanics and Physics'' (1916) References *J. L. Coolidge, "William Elwood Byerly—In memoriam", Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. Volume 4 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin Peirce
Benjamin Peirce (; April 4, 1809 – October 6, 1880) was an American mathematician who taught at Harvard University for approximately 50 years. He made contributions to celestial mechanics, statistics, number theory, algebra, and the philosophy of mathematics. Early life He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Peirce (1778–1831), later librarian of Harvard, and Lydia Ropes Nichols Peirce (1781–1868). After graduating from Harvard University in 1829, he taught mathematics for two years at the Round Hill School in Northampton, and in 1831 was appointed professor of mathematics at Harvard. He added astronomy to his portfolio in 1842, and remained as Harvard professor until his death. In addition, he was instrumental in the development of Harvard's science curriculum, served as the college librarian, and was director of the U.S. Coast Survey from 1867 to 1874. In 1842, he was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society. He was elected a F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
