Dunham Jackson (July 24, 1888 in

Bridgewater, Massachusetts Bridgewater is a town located in Plymouth County, in the state of Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, the town's population was 28,633. Bridgewater is located approximately south of Boston and approximately 35 miles east ...

– November 6, 1946) was a mathematician who worked within

approximation theory In mathematics, approximation theory is concerned with how functions can best be approximated with simpler functions, and with quantitatively characterizing the errors introduced thereby. Note that what is meant by ''best'' and ''simpler'' wil ...

, notably with trigonometrical and

orthogonal polynomials In mathematics, an orthogonal polynomial sequence is a family of polynomials such that any two different polynomials in the sequence are orthogonal to each other under some inner product. The most widely used orthogonal polynomials are the cl ...

. He is known for

Jackson's inequality In approximation theory, Jackson's inequality is an inequality bounding the value of function's best approximation by polynomials, algebraic or trigonometric polynomials in terms of the modulus of continuity or modulus of smoothness of the function ...

. He was awarded the

Chauvenet Prize The Chauvenet Prize is the highest award for mathematical expository writing. It consists of a prize of $1,000 and a certificate, and is awarded yearly by the Mathematical Association of America in recognition of an outstanding expository article ...

in 1935. His book ''

Fourier Series A Fourier series () is a summation of harmonically related sinusoidal functions, also known as components or harmonics. The result of the summation is a periodic function whose functional form is determined by the choices of cycle length (or '' ...

and Orthogonal Polynomials'' (dated 1941) was reprinted in 2004.

Career

After attending the local school in Bridgewater, Jackson went up to Harvard in 1904 at the age of 16 to study mathematics, graduating A.B in 1908 and A.M. in 1909. He then moved to continue his studies at Göttingen for two years with the help of Harvard Fellowships. He returned to Harvard in 1911 as an instructor in mathematics and was promoted Assistant Professor in 1916. During the First World War he became an officer in the Ordnance Department where he produced a booklet of range tables for the artillery. In 1919 he took up a professorship in mathematics at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

, remaining there until his death. While at Minnesota he won the

from the Mathematical Association of America in 1935 and was inducted as a

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its moti ...

in 1936.

Private life

He married Harriet Spratt Hulley in 1918; they had two daughters, Anne Hulley Jackson and Mary Eloise Jackson.

Publications

* Dunham Jackson: ''The Theory of Approximation.'' AMS, 1930. * Dunham Jackson: ''Fourier Series and Orthogonal Polynomials.''

Carus Mathematical Monographs The ''Carus Mathematical Monographs'' is a monograph series published by the Mathematical Association of America.Drake, Miriam A. (2003). ''Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science: Lib-Pub.'' CRC Press, Books in this series are intended t ...

, 1941.

References

External links

*
Dunham Jackson
at the Mathematics Genealogy Project.
Jackson's photo
at Mathematical Association of America site.
Another (bigger one) photo of Jackson
at ''History of Approximation Theory'' site.
National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jackson, Dunham 1888 births 1946 deaths People from Bridgewater, Massachusetts 20th-century American mathematicians Presidents of the Mathematical Association of America Mathematicians from Massachusetts Fellows of the American Physical Society University of Minnesota faculty Harvard College alumni