Nationality USA Education Princeton University Doctoral advisor J. J. Sylvester Influenced Alexander Macfarlane | Name G. Halsted Fields Geometry Role Mathematician | |
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Born November 25, 1853
Newark, New Jersey ( 1853-11-25 ) Institutions University of Texas, Austin
Kenyon College
Colorado State Teachers College Alma mater Princeton University
Johns Hopkins University Thesis Basis for a Dual Logic (1879) Known for Foundations of geometry Died March 16, 1922, New York City, New York, United States Books Synthetic Projective Geometry, Rational Geometry Notable students Robert Lee Moore, Leonard Eugene Dickson | ||
George Bruce Halsted (November 25, 1853 – March 16, 1922), usually cited as G. B. Halsted, was an American mathematician who explored foundations of geometry and introduced non-Euclidean geometry into the United States through his own work and his many important translations. Especially noteworthy were his translations and commentaries relating to non-Euclidean geometry, including works by Bolyai, Lobachevski, Saccheri, and Poincaré. He wrote an elementary geometry text, Rational Geometry, based on Hilbert's axioms, which was translated into French, German, and Japanese.
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Life
Halsted was a tutor and instructor at Princeton University. He held a mathematical fellowship while a student at Princeton. Halsted was a fourth generation Princeton graduate, earning his Bachelor's degree in 1875 and his Master's in 1878. He went on to Johns Hopkins University where he was J. J. Sylvester's first student, receiving his Ph.D. in 1879. After graduation, Halsted served as an instructor in mathematics at Princeton until beginning his post at the University of Texas at Austin in 1884.
From 1884 to 1903, Halsted was a member of the University of Texas at Austin Department of Pure and Applied Mathematics, eventually becoming its chair. He taught mathematicians R. L. Moore and L. E. Dickson, among other students, who frequently joked that his primary criterion for the rationality of a geometric system was the simplicity of the terms in which it could express the closed space figure formed by the contours of his mustache. He explored the foundations of geometry and explored many alternatives to Euclid's development, culminating with his Rational Geometry. In the interest of hyperbolic geometry in 1891 he translated the work of Nicolai Lobachevsky on theory of parallels. In 1893 in Chicago, Halsted read a paper Some salient points in the history of non-Euclidean and hyper-spaces at the International Mathematical Congress held in connection with the World's Columbian Exposition. Halsted frequently contributed to the early American Mathematical Monthly. In one article he championed the role of J. Bolyai in the development of non-Euclidean geometry and criticized C. F. Gauss. See also the letter from Robert Gauss to Felix Klein on 3 September 1912.
In 1903, Halsted was fired from UT Austin after having published several articles that criticized the university for having passed over R. L. Moore, at that time a young and promising mathematician whom Halsted hoped to have as an assistant, for an instructor post in favor of a well-connected but less qualified candidate with roots in the area. He completed his teaching career at St. John's College, Annapolis; Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio (1903-1906); and the Colorado State Teachers College, Greeley (1906-1914).
Halsted was a member of the American Mathematical Society and served as vice president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1905.