American mathematician
William Fogg Osgood
Born (1864-03-10 ) March 10, 1864Died July 22, 1943(1943-07-22) (aged 79) Resting place
Forest Hills Cemetery , Boston Nationality
American Alma mater
Harvard University ,
University of Göttingen ,
Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg Known for
Complex analysis ,
conformal mapping ,
calculus of variations Spouse(s) Teresa Osgood, Celeste Phelpes Morse Children 3 Scientific career Fields
Mathematics Institutions
Harvard University ,
Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg Doctoral students
David Raymond Curtiss
William Fogg Osgood (March 10, 1864 – July 22, 1943) was an American
mathematician .
Education and career
Osgood at Harvard, c. 1886
William Fogg Osgood was born in
Boston on March 10, 1864.
[1] In 1886, he graduated from
Harvard , where, after studying at the universities of
Göttingen (1887–1889) and
Erlangen (
Ph.D. , 1890), he was instructor (1890–1893), assistant professor (1893–1903), and thenceforth
professor of mathematics. From 1918 to 1922, he was chairman of the department of mathematics at Harvard. He became
professor emeritus in 1933. From 1934 to 1936, he was visiting professor of mathematics at
Peking University .
[2]
From 1899 to 1902, he served as editor of the
Annals of Mathematics , and in 1905–1906 was president of the
American Mathematical Society , whose Transactions he edited in 1909–1910.
Contributions
The works of Osgood dealt with
complex analysis , in particular
conformal mapping and uniformization of
analytic functions , and
calculus of variations . He was invited by
Felix Klein to write an article on complex analysis in the
Enzyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften , which was later expanded in the book Lehrbuch der Funktionentheorie .
Osgood curves –
Jordan curves with positive area – are named after Osgood, who published a paper proving their existence in 1903.
[3]
Besides his research on
analysis , Osgood was also interested in
mathematical physics and wrote on the theory of the
gyroscope .
Awards and honors
Osgood was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1899.
[4] In 1904, he was elected to the
National Academy of Sciences .
[5] He was elected to the
American Philosophical Society in 1915.
[6]
Personal life
Osgood's cousin, Louise Osgood, was the mother of
Bernard Koopman .
[7]
William Fogg Osgood died at his home in
Belmont, Massachusetts on July 22, 1943.
[8]
Selected publications
Osgood's books include:
Introduction to Infinite Series (Harvard University Press 1897; third edition, 1906)
Lehrbuch der Funktionentheorie (Teubner, Berlin, 1907; second edition, 1912)
First Course in Differential and Integral
Calculus (1907; revised edition, 1909)
(with W. C. Graustein)
Plane and Solid Analytic Geometry (Macmillan, NY, 1921)
Elementary Calculus (MacMillan, NY, 1921)
Advanced Calculus (MacMillan, NY, 1925)
Mechanics (MacMillan, NY, 1937)
See also
Notes
References
American Mathematical Society (2011),
"8. William Fogg Osgood (1905–1908)" ,
AMS Presidents: A Timeline , Providence, RI:
University of California, Berkeley , retrieved October 31, 2011 .
Archibald, Raymond Clare (1938),
A Semicentennial History of the American Mathematical Society, 1888--1938. Volume I , Providence, RI:
American Mathematical Society , p. 262,
ISBN
0-8218-0118-X ,
JFM
64.0004.01 ,
MR
0959537 ,
Zbl
0019.24305 .
J. L. Coolidge ,
G. D. Birkhoff &
E. C. Kemble (1943) William Fogg Osgood ,
Science 98:399–400 (issue #2549).
Koopman, Bernard Osgood (March 1944),
"William Fogg Osgood—In memoriam" ,
Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society , 50 (3): 139–142,
doi :
10.1090/s0002-9904-1944-08080-4 ,
MR
0010143 ,
Zbl
0060.01703 .
Morse, Philip M. (1982), "In Memoriam: Bernard Osgood Koopman, 1900–1981", Operations Research , 30 (3): viii+417–427,
doi :
10.1287/opre.30.3.417 ,
JSTOR
170181 .
Osgood, William F. (1903),
"A Jordan Curve of Positive Area" (PDF) ,
Transactions of the American Mathematical Society , 4 (1): 107–112,
doi :
10.1090/S0002-9947-1903-1500628-5 ,
ISSN
0002-9947 ,
JFM
34.0533.02 ,
JSTOR
1986455 ,
MR
1500628 .
Walsh, J. L. (1973), "History of the Riemann mapping theorem",
The American Mathematical Monthly , 80 (3): 270–276,
doi :
10.1080/00029890.1973.11993266 ,
ISSN
0002-9890 ,
JSTOR
2318448 ,
MR
0323996 ,
Zbl
0273.30003 .
Walsh, Joseph L. (2002),
"William Fogg Osgood" , in
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (ed.),
Biographical Memoirs , vol. 81, Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, pp. 246–257,
doi :
10.17226/577 ,
ISBN
978-0-309-03391-6 .
Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Report (Report VII) of the Secretary of the Class of 1886 of Harvard College . The University Press. 1911. pp. 166–167. Retrieved April 17, 2023 – via Internet Archive. .
"William F. Osgood" .
Hartford Courant . Belmont, Massachusetts (published July 24, 1943). AP. July 23, 1943. p. 4. Retrieved April 17, 2023 – via Newspapers.com. .
External links
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
public domain :
Gilman, D. C. ; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Osgood, William Fogg".
New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
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