Henry Taber

American mathematician

Henry Taber
Born	(1860-06-10)June 10, 1860 Staten Island, New York, US
Died	January 6, 1936(1936-01-06) (aged 75)
Alma mater	Sheffield Scientific School Johns Hopkins University
Spouse	Fanny Lawrence (†1892)
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Clark University
Thesis	On Clifford's n-fold Algebras (1886)
Doctoral advisor	William Edward Story
Doctoral students	William Metzler Stephen Elmer Slocum

Henry Taber (1860–1936) was an American mathematician.

Biography

Taber studied mechanical engineering at Sheffield Scientific School from 1877 to 1882.^[1] Then, he went to Baltimore to study mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, under Charles Sanders Peirce^[2] and William Edward Story. He was awarded a doctorate in 1888, with a dissertation most likely tutored by Story.^[3]

The following year he was assistant professor at Johns Hopkins, but in 1889, on Clark University's foundation hiring his teacher and friend, Story, he went also to Clark.^[4] Both remained at Clark as mathematics professors until retirement in 1921.^[5]

His brother, Robert Taber, was a well known Broadway theatre actor.

Taber popularized linear algebra as expressed with matrices, in particular the symmetric matrix, skew-symmetric matrix, and orthogonal matrix.

Works

The papers by Henry Taber have been listed by Bibliographica Hopkinsiensis^[6]

1890: On the Theory of Matrices, American Journal of Mathematics 12: 337 via Hathi Trust
1891: "On certain Identities in the Theory of Matrices", American Journal of Mathematics 13
1891: "On the application to matrices of any order of the quaternion symbols S and V", Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society 22
1891: "On certain properties of symmetric, skew-symmetric and orthogonal matrices", Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society 22
1891: "On the matrical equation φ Ω = Ω φ", Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 18
1891: "On a theorem of Sylvester's relating to non-degenerate matrices", Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Science 19
1892: "Note on representation of orthogonal matrices", Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Science 19
1893: "On real orthogonal substitution", Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Science 20
1893: "On the linear transformations between two quadrics", Journal of the London Mathematical Society 24
1894: "On orthogonal substitutions that can be expressed as a function of a single alternate (or skew-symmetric) substitution", American Journal of Mathematics 16

References

^ Cooke & Rickey 1989, p. 44.
^ Pietarinen & Chevalier 2014, p. 23.
^ Cooke & Rickey 1989, p. 45.
^ Cooke & Rickey 1989, p. 50.
^ Cooke & Rickey 1989, p. 58.
^ Henry Taber in Bibliographica Hopkinsiensis via Google Books

Bibliography

Cooke, Roger; Rickey, V. Frederick (1989). "W. E. Story of Hopkins and Clark". In Peter Duren (ed.). A century of mathematics in America. Part 3. American Mathematical Society. pp. 29–76. ISBN 0-8218-0136-8.
Pietarinen, Ahti-Veikko; Chevalier, Jean Marie (2014). "The Johns Hopkins Metaphysical Club and Its Impact on the Development of the Philosophy and Methodology of Sciences in the Late 19th-Century United States". Commens Working Papers (2): 1–26. ISSN 2342-4532.