George Abram Miller

George Abram Miller (born July 31, 1863 in Lynnville , Pennsylvania , † February 10, 1951 in Urbana (Illinois) ) was an American mathematician who mainly dealt with group theory.

life and work

Miller came from a farming family. He studied at Franklin Academy from 1882 and then at Muehlenberg College in Allentown (Pennsylvania) , where he received his bachelor's degree in 1887 and his master's degree in 1890. He had to finance his studies as a teacher himself because his family was too poor, which delayed his studies. He ran schools in Greeley in Kansas and was a mathematics teacher at Eureka College in Illinois in 1887/88. He then attended Johns Hopkins University and the University of Michigan in the summer months of 1889 and 1980, respectively . In 1892 he received his doctorate from Cumberland University in Lebanon (Tennessee)(which was possible with correspondence courses and a subsequent exam) and then became an instructor at the University of Michigan, where he became interested in group theory with Frank Nelson Cole . His PhD students included Beulah Armstrong , Josephine Elizabeth Burns Glasgow , Elizabeth Ruth Bennett , William Benjamin Fite .

From 1895 to 1897 he was in Europe with Sophus Lie in Leipzig and Camille Jordan in Paris. After returning in 1897 he became a professor at Cornell University . In 1901 he became a professor at Stanford University and in 1906 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , where he remained until his retirement.

In group theory, he dealt with the classification of finite groups under various constraints, for example the order of the group or the number of generators. He also dealt with the history of mathematics.

In 1891 he became a member of the New York Mathematical Society, from which the American Mathematical Society emerged , whose section in San Francisco he co-founded in 1902. He was a member of the DMV , the London Mathematical Society and an honorary member of the Indian Mathematical Society. In 1919 he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1921 the National Academy of Sciences . From 1909 to 1915 he published the American Mathematical Monthly. 1921/22 he was president of the Mathematical Association of America .

He had been married since 1909. The marriage was childless, and he bequeathed his sizeable skillful fortune ($ 1 million) to the University of Illinois.

Fonts

• Collected Works, 5 volumes, University of Illinois 1935
• Determinants, Van Nostrand 1892
• Historical introduction to mathematical literature, New York, Macmillan 1916
• with Hans Blichfeldt , Leonard Dickson Theory and application of finite groups , New York, Wiley 1916, Reprint Dover 1961

Web links

• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  George Abram Miller. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
• George Abram Miller in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)