George Birch Jerrard (25 November 1804 – 23 November 1863) was a British

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

. He studied at

Trinity College, Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

from 1821 to 1827. His main work was on the

theory of equations In algebra, the theory of equations is the study of algebraic equations (also called "polynomial equations"), which are equations defined by a polynomial. The main problem of the theory of equations was to know when an algebraic equation has an ...

, where he was reluctant to accept the validity of the work of

Niels Henrik Abel Niels Henrik Abel ( , ; 5 August 1802 – 6 April 1829) was a Norwegian mathematician who made pioneering contributions in a variety of fields. His most famous single result is the first complete proof demonstrating the impossibility of solvin ...

on the insolubility of the

quintic equation In algebra, a quintic function is a function of the form :g(x)=ax^5+bx^4+cx^3+dx^2+ex+f,\, where , , , , and are members of a field, typically the rational numbers, the real numbers or the complex numbers, and is nonzero. In other words, a q ...

radical Radical may refer to: Politics and ideology Politics *Radical politics, the political intent of fundamental societal change *Radicalism (historical), the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe and ...

s. He found a way of using

Tschirnhaus transformation In mathematics, a Tschirnhaus transformation, also known as Tschirnhausen transformation, is a type of mapping on polynomials developed by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus in 1683. Simply, it is a method for transforming a polynomial equatio ...

s to eliminate three of the terms in an equation, which generalised work of Erland Bring (1736–1798), and is now called

Bring–Jerrard normal form In algebra, the Bring radical or ultraradical of a real number ''a'' is the unique real root of the polynomial : x^5 + x + a. The Bring radical of a complex number ''a'' is either any of the five roots of the above polynomial (it is thus m ...

Works

* ''An essay on the resolution of equations'', part 1, London 1858,
online
.

References

External links

* English mathematicians 1804 births 1863 deaths Algebraists 19th-century British mathematicians Alumni of Trinity College Dublin {{UK-mathematician-stub