Joseph Wedderburn

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Joseph Wedderburn

Joseph Henry Maclagan Wedderburn (born February 2, 1882 in Forfar , Forfarshire , Scotland , † October 9, 1948 in Princeton , New Jersey ) was a Scottish mathematician who was most of his life at Princeton University . Among other things, he became known for his contributions in the field of algebra .

Life

Joseph Wedderburn was born the tenth of fourteen children to a doctor. In his father's family the clergy predominated, in that of his mother the lawyers. He went to school in Forfar north Dundee and in Edinburgh and began studying in Edinburgh on a scholarship in 1898. As early as 1903 he made his master's degree in mathematics with top grades, while at the same time he was already publishing his first mathematical works. From 1903 to 1904 he continued his studies in Leipzig and Berlin , a. a. with Ferdinand Georg Frobenius and Issai Schur . His turn to algebra was consolidated through a stay in Chicago with Oswald Veblen and Leonard Dickson , the then leading mathematician in the theory of algebras. Back in Edinburgh as an assistant to George Chrystal that every finite proved Wedderburn 1905 division ring (division algebra) commutative , this result today as a set of Wedderburn known. Wedderburn gave a total of three proofs of the theorem, of which the first was incorrect, (so that Dickson actually has priority, who also gave a proof in the same year). With Veblen, he turned the results on finite projective geometries and showed that there the sentence by Pascal from the set of Desargues follows. In addition, they constructed finite projective geometries in which both theorems do not apply, compare quasi-bodies , also called the Veblen-Wedderburn system .

In 1907 he published a fundamental work, his dissertation, on the classification of semi- simple algebras ( On hypercomplex numbers , Proc. London Math. Soc.) As a direct sum of simple algebras, which in turn can be represented as matrix algebras over a skew body. This is the set of Artin-Wedderburn of ring theory generalized.

In 1909 he became an assistant ( preceptor ) at Princeton , where Veblen also taught. During the First World War he volunteered at the outbreak of war and was most recently occupied as a captain with the development of systems for the acoustic detection of artillery positions. On his return in 1920 he became an assistant professor at Princeton. 1912 to 1928 he was editor of the Annals of Mathematics. In 1934 his main work Lectures on the theory of Matrices was published . Like Dirac with his book on quantum mechanics, Wedderburn had a habit of reading from it almost verbatim in lectures.

Wedderburn was of a very reserved, shy demeanor. While he had a large circle of friends at the beginning of his US stay, with whom he preferably went canoeing and camping trips into the wilderness, he increasingly withdrew due to depression in the late 1920s. After his retirement in 1945 he was completely isolated, so that the exact date of his death (heart attack in his house) is not known. He never married.

Wedderburn was elected to the Royal Society in 1933 after having been a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh since 1904 .

Nathan Jacobson was one of his students .

literature

  • Karen Parshall : Joseph HM Wedderburn and the Structure Theory of Algebras , Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 32, 1985, pp. 223-349.
  • Parshall: In Search of the Finite Division Algebra Theorem and Beyond: Joseph HM Wedderburn, Leonard E. Dickson, and Oswald Veblen , Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences , Vol. 35, 1983, pp. 274-299
  • Parshall: New Light on the Life and Work of Joseph Henry Maclagan Wedderburn (1882-1948), in Menso Folkerts (editor): Amphora: Festschrift for Hans Wussing on his 65th birthday , Birkhäuser Verlag, 1992, pp. 523-537.

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ This was examined by Karen Parshall in her dissertation at the University of Chicago in 1982
  2. ↑ Joseph Wedderburn in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)Template: MathGenealogyProject / Maintenance / id used
  3. ↑ a tutor position created by Woodrow Wilson with great freedom for own research and close contact with students
  4. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed April 21, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Wedderburn, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wedderburn, Joseph Henry Maclagan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Forfar , Angus , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH October 9, 1948
Place of death Princeton , New Jersey