Henry Burchard Fine
Henry Burchard Fine ( born September 14, 1858 in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, † December 22, 1928 in Princeton, New Jersey ) was an American mathematician and science organizer. He played a significant role in the transformation of the Princeton University from college to an internationally recognized university.
Life and work
Fine was the son of a Presbyterian minister, who grew up in Princeton in 1875 after the early death of his father, where Fine graduated in 1880 the College of New Jersey ( predecessor of the Princeton University ). There he distinguished himself in classical languages and mathematics, which he heard at George Halstead, forth and became friends with the late President Woodrow Wilson (from 1890 as a law professor, his colleague at Princeton ), whom he replaced as editor of the college magazine Princetonian. He was then first tutor for mathematics and then went to Leipzig to Felix Klein, where he received his doctorate in 1885. In 1885 he was Assistant Professor and in 1889 Professor at Princeton. In 1898 he was Dod Professor of Mathematics, 1903 ( when Wilson was President of the University ) Dean ( Dean ) of the University and in 1904 chairman of the Mathematics Faculty ( which was then just being introduced ). In 1909 he became dean of the Department of Science.
Through relationships with European universities (including Joseph John Thomson in Cambridge ) and a good eye for new emerging talent he brought physicists such as James Jeans, Owen Willans Richardson, Henry Norris Russell and mathematicians such as Luther Eisenhart, Robert Lee Moore, Oswald Veblen, Gilbert Ames Bliss, Joseph Wedderburn, George Birkhoff to Princeton.
Fine wrote widespread college textbooks ( on algebra in 1905 and Analysis 1927).
Fine got from his friend Wilson, after he became president, also offering high offices of state, such as that of an ambassador in Germany, but he refused. Also offers, president of Johns Hopkins University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to be, he refused. Fine was co-founder of the American Mathematical Society and 1911/1912 its president.
In Princeton, the 1930 -built Fine Hall (the former mathematics building, now Jones Hall, built in 1968 successor building for mathematics is also called Fine Hall ) named after him and a mathematics chair ( Henry B. Fine Professor ), both sponsored by a wealthy former students of Princeton, Thomas D. Jones.
His brother John B. Fine was director of the Princeton Preparatory School, and his sister May Margaret Fine founded his own school (Miss Fine 's School ).
Writings
- The Number - System of Algebra Treated Theoretically and Historically. Leach Shewell and Sanborn, Boston New York 1891 (on the Internet Archive:, new edition 1903, 1907, 1937).
- A college algebra. Ginn and Company, 1905 (on the Internet Archive:, ).
- With Henry Dallas Thompson: Coordinate Geometry. The Macmillan Company, New York in 1909 ( at the University of Michigan, on the Internet Archive:, ).
- Calculus. The Macmillan company, 1927.