John Charles Fields
John Charles Fields ( born May 14, 1863 in Hamilton ( Ontario); † August 9, 1932 in Toronto ) was a Canadian mathematician. He was the initiator of the eponymous Fields Medal, the highest award that can get mathematicians.
Life and work
John Charles Fields was the son of a businessman who owned a leather goods store in Hamilton. The father died when Fields was eleven years old. Fields attended the Hamilton Collegiate Institute, where he distinguished himself as an outstanding student. In 1880, he graduated and was awarded several times. Fields went further in 1880 to the University of Toronto, to study mathematics.
Fields went to the U.S. to do a doctorate at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He taught there for two years, so I can work at Allegheny College as a lecturer in mathematics. After three years, Fields moved to Europe to conduct research in Berlin, Göttingen and Paris with the greatest mathematicians of his time. Fields met Lazarus Immanuel Fuchs, Kurt Hensel, Hermann Amandus Schwarz, Karl Weierstrass, Felix Klein, Ferdinand Georg Frobenius and Max Planck. Next stay in Europe led to a close life-long -lasting friendship with Magnus Gösta Mittag-Leffler. During this time he began with numerous publications on his main area of research Algebraic functions.
1913 Fields included as a member ( "Fellow" ) to the Royal Society.