Joseph Wedderburn (nonfiction)
Joseph Henry Maclagan Wedderburn FRSE FRS (2 February 1882, Forfar, Angus, Scotland – 9 October 1948, Princeton, New Jersey) was a Scottish mathematician who taught at Princeton University for most of his career. A significant algebraist, he proved that a finite division algebra is a field, and part of the Artin–Wedderburn theorem on simple algebras. He also worked on group theory and matrix algebra.
In 1898 Wedderburn entered the University of Edinburgh. In 1903, he published his first three papers, worked as an assistant in the Physical Laboratory of the University, obtained an MA degree with First Class Honours in mathematics, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, upon the proposal of George Chrystal, James Gordon MacGregor, Cargill Gilston Knott, and William Peddie.
Wedderburn was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, upon the proposal of George Chrystal, James Gordon MacGregor, Cargill Gilston Knott, and William Peddie.
He then studied briefly at the University of Leipzig and the University of Berlin, where he met the algebraists Frobenius and [[Issai Schur (nonfiction)|Issai Schur. A Carnegie Scholarship allowed him to spend the 1904–1905 academic year at the University of Chicago where he worked with Oswald Veblen, E. H. Moore, and most importantly, Leonard Dickson, who was to become the most important American algebraist of his day.
Returning to Scotland in 1905, Wedderburn worked for four years at the University of Edinburgh as an assistant to George Chrystal, who supervised his D.Sc, awarded in 1908 for a thesis titled On Hypercomplex Numbers.
In the News
Fiction cross-reference
Nonfiction cross-reference
- Cargill Gilston Knott (nonfiction)
- George Chrystal (nonfiction)
- Issai Schur (nonfiction)
- Mathematician (nonfiction)
- Nathan Jacobson (nonfiction) - student
External links:
- Joseph Wedderburn @ Wikipedia
