19th and 20th-century British mathematician
Andrew Russell Forsyth ,
FRS ,
[1]
FRSE (18 June 1858,
Glasgow – 2 June 1942,
South Kensington ) was a British mathematician.
[2]
[3]
Life
Forsyth was born in
Glasgow on 18 June 1858, the son of John Forsyth, a marine engineer, and his wife Christina Glen.
[4]
Forsyth studied at
Liverpool College and was tutored by
Richard Pendlebury before entering
Trinity College, Cambridge , graduating
senior wrangler in 1881.
[5] He was elected a fellow of Trinity and then appointed to the chair of mathematics at the
University of Liverpool at the age of 24. He returned to Cambridge as a lecturer in 1884 and became
Sadleirian Professor of Pure Mathematics in 1895.
[6]
Forsyth was forced to resign his chair in 1910 as a result of a scandal caused by his affair with Marion Amelia Boys, née Pollock, the wife of physicist
C. V. Boys . Boys was granted a divorce on the grounds of Marion's adultery with Forsyth. Marion and Andrew Forsyth were later married.
[7]
Forsyth became professor at the
Imperial College of Science in 1913 and retired in 1923, remaining mathematically active into his seventies. He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1886
[1] and won its
Royal Medal in 1897. He was a Plenary Speaker of the
ICM in 1908 at Rome.
[8]
He is now remembered much more as an author of treatises than as an original researcher. His books have, however, often been criticized (for example by
J. E. Littlewood , in his
A Mathematician's Miscellany ).
[9]
E. T. Whittaker was his only official student.
[3]
Forsyth's urn at Golders Green Crematorium
He died in
London on 2 June 1942 and was cremated at
Golders Green Crematorium .
[4]
Forsyth received the degree of Doctor mathematicae (
honoris causa ) from the
Royal Frederick University on 6 September 1902, when they celebrated the centennial of the birth of
mathematician
Niels Henrik Abel .
[10]
[11]
Family
Forsyth married Marion Amelia Pollock in 1910.
[1]
Works
See also
References
^
a
b
c
Whittaker, E. T. (1942).
"Andrew Russell Forsyth. 1858–1942" .
Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society . 4 (11): 208–226.
doi :
10.1098/rsbm.1942.0017 .
S2CID
162333074 .
^ O'Connor, John J.;
Robertson, Edmund F. ,
"Andrew Forsyth" ,
MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive ,
University of St Andrews
^
a
b
Andrew Forsyth at the
Mathematics Genealogy Project
^
a
b
Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF) . The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006.
ISBN
0-902-198-84-X . Archived from
the original (PDF) on 24 January 2013. Retrieved 27 May 2016 .
^
"Forsyth, Andrew Russell (FRST877AR)" . A Cambridge Alumni Database . University of Cambridge.
^
"Three Sadleirian Professors" . Maths History . Retrieved 12 September 2023 .
^ www.myheritage.com
https://www.myheritage.com/names/andrew_forsyth# . Retrieved 12 September 2023 .
^ Forsyth, A. R. (1909).
"On the present condition of partial differential equations of the second order as regards formal integration" . In G. Castelnuovo (ed.). Atti del IV Congresso Internazionale dei Matematici (Roma, 6–11 Aprile 1908) . ICM proceedings. Vol. 1. University of Toronto Press. pp. 87–103.
^
Littlewood, John Edensor (1986).
A Mathematician's Miscellany .
Cambridge University Press . p.
135 .
ISBN
9780521337021 . A. R. Forsyth wrote a
CUP book on functions of two complex variables. It is a thoroughly bad book.
^ "Foreign degrees for British men of Science". The Times . No. 36867. London. 8 September 1902. p. 4.
^
"Honorary doctorates from the University of Oslo 1902–1910" . (in Norwegian)
^
Carmichael, R. D. (1913).
"Book Review: Lehrbuch der Differentialgleichungen " . Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society . 19 (5): 256–260.
doi :
10.1090/S0002-9904-1913-02348-6 .
^
Osgood, W. F. (1895).
"Book Review: Theory of Functions of a Complex Variable" . Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society . 1 (6): 142–155.
doi :
10.1090/S0002-9904-1895-00263-3 .
^
Wilczynski, E. J. (1903).
"Book Review: Theory of Differential Equations (volumes 2,3, & 4)" . Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society . 10 (2): 86–94.
doi :
10.1090/S0002-9904-1903-01073-8 .
^ Carmichael, R. D. (1918).
"Book Review: Lectures Introductory to the Theory of Functions of Two Complex Variables " . Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society . 24 (9): 446–455.
doi :
10.1090/S0002-9904-1918-03119-4 .
S2CID
44682430 .
^
Moore, Charles N. (1921).
"Book Review: Solutions of the Examples in a Treatise on Differential Equations " . Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society . 27 (4): 181–183.
doi :
10.1090/S0002-9904-1921-03390-8 .
^ Forsyth, Andrew Russell (1927).
Calculus of Variations . The University Press.
^
Bliss, G. A. (1928).
"Book Review: Calculus of Variations " . Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society . 34 (4): 512–515.
doi :
10.1090/S0002-9904-1928-04581-0 .
^
Moore, C. L. E. (1931).
"Book Review: Geometry of Four Dimensions " . Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society . 37 (11): 806–808.
doi :
10.1090/S0002-9904-1931-05260-5 .
^ Forsyth, Andrew Russell (1935).
Intrinsic Geometry of Ideal Space . Macmillan and Company, limited.
ISBN
978-0-598-55172-6 .
External links
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