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Derrick Norman Lehmer

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Occupation
  
Mathematician

Education
  
University of Chicago

Role
  
Mathematician


Name
  
Derrick Lehmer

Spouse(s)
  
Clara Eunice Mitchell

Children
  
Derrick Henry Lehmer

Derrick Norman Lehmer

Born
  
July 27, 1867 (
1867-07-27
)
Somerset, Indiana, United States

Died
  
September 8, 1938, Berkeley, California, United States

Parents
  
Derrick Fernstuck Lehmer; Isabel Smith Peery

Derrick Norman Lehmer (27 July 1867 – 8 September 1938) was an American mathematician and number theorist.

Derrick Norman Lehmer Portraits of Derrick Norman Lehmer 1867 1938

He was educated at the University of Nebraska, obtaining a bachelor's degree in 1893 and master's in 1896. Lehmer was awarded his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1900 for a thesis Asymptotic Evaluation of Certain Totient-Sums under the supervision of E. H. Moore. He was appointed instructor in mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1900 and married Clara Eunice Mitchell on 12 July 1900 in Decatur, Illinois. He was promoted to professor at Berkeley in 1918 and continued to teach there until retiring in 1937.

In 1903, he presented a factorization of Jevons' number (8,616,460,799) at the San Francisco Section of the American Mathematical Society, December 19, 1903.

He published tables of prime numbers and prime factorizations, reaching 10,017,000 by 1909. He developed a variety of mechanical and electro-mechanical factoring and computational devices, such as the Lehmer sieve, built with his son Derrick Henry Lehmer.

Selected works

  • "Arithmetical theory of certain Hurwitzian continued fractions". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 4 (8): 214–218. 1918. PMC 1091449 . PMID 16576302. doi:10.1073/pnas.4.8.214. 
  • "On Jacobi's extension of the continued fraction algorithm". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 4 (12): 360–364. 1918. PMC 1091496 . PMID 16576328. doi:10.1073/pnas.4.12.360. 
  • "On a new method of factorization". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 11 (1): 97–98. 1925. PMC 1085844 . PMID 16586982. doi:10.1073/pnas.11.1.97. 
  • "A theorem on factorization". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 33 (1): 35–36. 1927. MR 1561316. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1927-04299-9. 
  • "Inverse ternary continued fractions". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 37 (8): 565–569. 1931. MR 1562198. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1931-05206-x. 
  • "On the enumeration of magic cubes". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 40 (12): 833–837. 1934. MR 1562983. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1934-05976-7. 
  • References

    Derrick Norman Lehmer Wikipedia