John Charles Fields ( May 14, 1863 - August 9, 1932 ) - Canadian mathematician , founder of the Fields Prize for outstanding achievements in mathematics .
| John Charles Fields | |
|---|---|
| English John charles fields | |
 | |
| Date of Birth | May 14, 1863 |
| Place of Birth | Hamilton |
| Date of death | August 9, 1932 (69 years old) |
| Place of death | Toronto |
| A country |  Canada |
| Scientific field | maths |
| Place of work | |
| Alma mater | University of Toronto |
| Known as | Fields Prize Founder |
| Awards and prizes | member of the Royal Society of London [d] |
John Charles Fields was born in the city of Hamilton , Ontario in the family of the owner of a leather store. In 1880 he graduated from the Hamilton Collegiate Institute, in 1884 - the University of Toronto , after which he moved to the United States to study at Johns Hopkins University ( Baltimore , Maryland ), where in 1887 he received a Ph.D. . His dissertation, " Symbolic Finite Solutions and Solutions by Definite Integrals of the Equation d n y / dx n = x m y " in 1886, was published in the journal American Journal of Mathematics .
Fields taught for two years at Johns Hopkins University, after which he moved to work at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA . Disappointed with the level of mathematics in North America, he went to Europe in 1891, where in Berlin , Göttingen and Paris he met with the outstanding mathematicians of his time - such as Karl Weierstrass , Felix Klein , Ferdinand Frobenius and Max Planck . He also made friends with Magnus Göst Mittag-Leffler , and their friendship lasted a lifetime. Fields began to publish articles on a new topic - algebraic functions , and this turned out to be the most fruitful field for research in his entire scientific career.
Fields returned to Canada in 1902 to lecture at the University of Toronto. In his native country, he worked tirelessly to raise the status of mathematics in scientific and public circles. He successfully lobbied the Ontario Provincial Legislature for a $ 75,000 annual research grant for the university, and helped found the Canadian National Research Agency and the Ontario Research Foundation.
From 1919 to 1925, John Charles Fields was president of the Royal Canadian Institute. He tried to turn the institute into a leading center for scientific research, and although it is difficult to talk about successes, nevertheless, in 1924, the next International Congress of Mathematicians was held in Toronto .
Fields is most famous for the Fields Prize institution, often called the "Nobel Prize for Mathematicians." He began to ponder the idea of such a prize back in the late 1920s , but poor health did not allow him to live to the point where this idea came to life. He died on August 9, 1932; according to his last will, $ 47,000 was allocated to found the Fields Medal Fund. The first award took place in 1936 ; after World War II, a medal and a prize are awarded every four years, starting in 1950 .
John Charles Fields was elected a member of the Royal Society of Canada (in 1907 ) and the Royal Society of London (in 1913 ).
The Fields Institute at the University of Toronto was named after him.
Links
- John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson . John Charles Fields MacTutor Archive
- Profile of John Charles Fields on the official website of the RAS