William Benjamin Fite

William Benjamin Fite (born August 23, 1869 , † 1932 ) was an American mathematician and university professor.

Life and research

Fite received his PhD in 1901 from Cornell University under George Abram Miller with the dissertation: On Metabelian Groups. In 1911 he became professor of mathematics at Columbia University in New York. In 1913 he was in charge of Lloyd Leroy Smail's doctorate at Columbia University. From 1921 to 1929 he was Treasurer of the American Mathematical Society . In addition to his book on Metabelian groups , he wrote other books on college algebra, among other things. His book "Old School Advanced Calculus" is a year-round course in Advanced Calculus, as it was offered at all American universities up until the 1970s. The long out of print text was republished in 2018 with a foreword by Karo Maestro, as the book was one of the first standard texts of its kind to be groundbreaking. The main advantage of the original course is a unified presentation of calculus, encompassing practically all of the major subjects required by both majors in mathematics and physics, and treated using a consistent terminology and accuracy.

Publications (selection)

Concerning the zeros of the solutions of certain differential equations, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 19 (1918), no. 4, 341-352
College algebra, Boston, DC Heath & Co., 1913
Second course in algebra, Boston, DC Heath & Co., 1914
Old School Advanced Calculus, 2018, ISBN 978-1986453820
First Course in Algebra, 2018, ISBN 978-0559370915

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Fite, William Benjamin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American mathematician and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH	August 23, 1869
DATE OF DEATH	1932