William Fogg Osgood

William Fogg Osgood ( born March 10, 1864 in Boston, † July 22, 1943 in Belmont, Massachusetts ) was an American mathematician.

Life and work

Osgood was born the son of a physician in Boston and studied classical languages ​​at the Boston Latin School and Harvard University ( from 1882), but where he switched to mathematics under the influence of Frank Nelson Cole, William Byerly and Benjamin Peirce. He graduated (Bachelor) in 1886 and received his master's degree a year later. In 1887 he went on a scholarship to the University of Göttingen to study with Felix Klein, 1889 at the University of Erlangen, where he earned his doctorate at the Max Noether on abelian functions in 1890. In the same year he married Theresa Ruprecht ( from the family of the co-founder of the publishing house Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht ), whom he had met in Göttingen. 1890-1893 he was a tutor in mathematics at Harvard, 1893, he became Assistant Professor in 1903 and Full Professor. With the new from Europe ( especially from Germany to the Osgood life had a special affinity - he dressed and behaved like a former German professor ) imported ideas Osgood made ​​together with Maxime Bocher of fresh air to Harvard.

Osgood had with his first wife, three children, but divorced in 1932 and married the then two years previously divorced former wife of Marston Morse, which led to a scandal that Osgood took leave from Harvard after themselves. Osgood then taught for two years at the University of Beijing, before he settled in Belmont.

Osgood worked mainly in the analysis, eg on differential equations and calculus of variations. In 1900 he gave the first rigorous proof of the Riemann mapping theorem. He also created early work on the theory of several complex variables come ( he wrote about it in 1914 a monograph ). He was also known for his three-volume textbook of function theory (1907, 1923, 1932).

In 1904 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. 1905-1906 he was president of the American Mathematical Society.