James Whitbread Lee Glaisher

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JWL Glaisher, 1908

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (born November 5, 1848 in Lewisham , Kent , † December 7, 1928 in Cambridge ) was an English mathematician and astronomer.

Live and act

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher was the son of meteorologist James Glaisher and his wife Cecilia Louisa, daughter of John Henry Belville.

As a lecturer at Cambridge University , he mainly dealt with astronomy , number theory , special functions and the history of mathematics . In total, he published over 400 works.

In 1871 Glaisher calculated 100 decimal places of Euler's constant . Previously, William Shanks had performed four calculations up to 68 decimal places in the years 1867–1869, of which only the first 48 were correct. Three months after Glaisher's calculation, Shanks made another attempt with 110 decimals, of which only 101 were correct. Glaisher's result was beaten by John Couch Adams in 1877 by 263 decimals.

In 1874, Glaisher proved that there are no more than the known 92 solutions to the queens problem in chess mathematics .

From 1871 to 1928 he was editor of the Messenger of Mathematics .

Glaisher remained unmarried. He died on December 7, 1928 on his premises at Trinity College, Cambridge .

Honors

In 1875 Glaisher was accepted as a member (" Fellow ") in the Royal Society , which in 1913 awarded him the New Year's Eve Medal . In 1916 he became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . He was also a member of numerous other British scientific societies such as the Royal Astronomical Society .

The London Mathematical Society awarded him the De Morgan Medal on November 12, 1908 . By then he had already written over 300 articles in the fields of definite and numerical integration, number theory, elliptical functions (especially series developments in connection with the theta functions), differential equations and astronomy.

Web links

Commons : James Glaisher  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Evgeni J. Gik: Chess and Mathematics , published by German Harri GmbH, ISBN 3871449873
  2. ↑ a b c Entry on Glaisher; James Whitbread Lee (1848-1928) in the Royal Society Archives , London
  3. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed December 8, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Glaisher, James Whitbread Lee
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Lewisham , Kent
DATE OF DEATH December 7, 1928
Place of death Cambridge