James Mercer FRS (15 January 1883 – 21 February 1932) was a mathematician, born in Bootle, close to Liverpool, England. He was educated at University of Manchester, and then University of Cambridge. He became a Fellow, saw active service at the

Battle of Jutland The Battle of Jutland (german: Skagerrakschlacht, the Battle of the Skagerrak) was a naval battle fought between Britain's Royal Navy Grand Fleet, under Admiral John Jellicoe, 1st Earl Jellicoe, Sir John Jellicoe, and the Imperial German Navy ...

in World War I and, after decades of ill health, died in London. He proved Mercer's theorem, which states that positive-definite kernels can be expressed as a dot product in a high-dimensional space. This theorem is the basis of the kernel trick ( applied by Aizerman), which allows linear algorithms to be easily converted into non-linear algorithms.

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1883 births 1932 deaths 19th-century British mathematicians 20th-century British mathematicians Mathematical analysts People from Bootle Alumni of the University of Manchester Senior Wranglers Scientists from Liverpool Fellows of the Royal Society {{UK-mathematician-stub