Henry Fine

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Henry Burchard Fine (born September 14, 1858 in Chambersburg , Pennsylvania , † December 22, 1928 in Princeton , New Jersey ) was an American mathematician and science organizer. He played a key role in the transformation of Princeton University from college to internationally recognized college.

Live and act

Fine was the son of a Presbyterian pastor who, after the early death of his father, grew up in Princeton from 1875, where Fine graduated from the College of New Jersey (forerunner of Princeton University ) in 1880 . There he excelled in classical languages ​​and mathematics, which he heard from George Halstead, and made friends with the future President Woodrow Wilson (from 1890 his colleague at Princeton as a law professor), whom he replaced as editor of the college magazine Princetonian . He was then initially a tutor for mathematics and then went to Leipzig to Felix Klein , where he received his doctorate in 1885. In 1885 he was Assistant Professor and in 1889 Professor at Princeton. In 1898 he became Dod Professor of Mathematics, in 1903 (when Wilson became President of the University) dean (Dean) of the university and in 1904 chairman of the Mathematics Faculty (which was just being established at the time). In 1909 he became dean of the Department of Science.

Through relationships with European universities (including Joseph John Thomson in Cambridge ) and a good eye for new emerging talent, he brought physicists such as James Jeans , Owen Willans Richardson , Henry Norris Russell and mathematicians such as Luther Eisenhart , Robert Lee Moore , Oswald Veblen , Gilbert Ames Bliss , Joseph Wedderburn , George Birkhoff to Princeton.

Fine wrote widely used college textbooks (on algebra in 1905 and analysis in 1927).

After his friend Wilson became president, Fine also received an offer of high state offices, such as that of ambassador to Germany, but he refused. He also turned down offers to become President of Johns Hopkins University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Fine was a co-founder of the American Mathematical Society and its president in 1911/1912. Since 1897 he was a member of the American Philosophical Society .

In Princeton, the Fine Hall built in 1930 (the former mathematics building, today Jones Hall, the successor building for mathematics built in 1968 is also called Fine Hall) is named after him and a mathematics chair (Henry B. Fine Professor), both sponsored by a wealthy former Princeton students, Thomas D. Jones.

His brother John B. Fine was the director of Princeton Preparatory School, and his sister May Margaret Fine founded her own school ( Miss Fine's School ).

Fonts

  • The Number-System of Algebra treated Theoretically and Historically. Leach Shewell and Sanborn, Boston New York 1891 (in the Internet archive: [1] , new edition 1903 , 1907 , 1937 ).
  • A college algebra. Ginn and Company, 1905 (in the Internet archive: [2] , [3] ).
  • with Henry Dallas Thompson: Coordinate Geometry. The Macmillan company, New York 1909 (at the University of Michigan: [4] ; in the Internet archive: [5] , [6] ).
  • Calculus. The Macmillan company, 1927.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Leitch: A Princeton Companion , 1978
  2. ^ Member History: Henry B. Fine. American Philosophical Society, accessed August 5, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Fine, Henry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fine, Henry Burchard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH September 14, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Chambersburg , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH December 22, 1928
Place of death Princeton, New Jersey