4-79. James Joseph Sylvester

James Joseph Sylvester was born in London in 1814. He was educated at University College London (UCL) and St. John’s College Cambridge, where he did well on the mathematical tripos examination, placing second in 1837. From 1838, he was Professor of Natural Philosophy at UCL. He resigned in 1841 and took up the chair of mathematics at the University of Virginia. This did not go well, and in 1843 Sylvester returned to England, where he worked as an actuary in London. In 1855 he became Professor of Mathematics at Royal Military Academy at Woolrich.

Sylvester taught at Woolrich until 1877, when he took up a chair in mathematics at Johns Hopkins University. He founded the American Journal of Mathematics in 1878, and took on Thomas Craig served as associate editor. He remained in Baltimore until his appointment in 1883 to Oxford’s Savilian chair of geometry. When his eyesight failed him in 1892, he gave up teaching and returned to London.

On Sylvester’s life and work, see Grattan-Guinness (2001) and Parshall (1998, 2006).

Time-stamp: "16.03.2023 21:42"