Harry Schultz Vandiver (21 October 1882 – 9 January 1973) was an American

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 ...

, known for work in

number theory Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic function, integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777� ...

. He was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

to John Lyon and Ida Frances (Everett) Vandiver. He did not complete a formal education, choosing instead to leave school at an early age to work for his father's firm, although he did attend some graduate classes at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

in 1904–5. From 1917 to 1919 he was a member of the

United States Naval Reserve The United States Navy Reserve (USNR), known as the United States Naval Reserve from 1915 to 2005, is the Reserve Component (RC) of the United States Navy. Members of the Navy Reserve, called Reservists, are categorized as being in either the Sele ...

, and in 1919 became an instructor of mathematics at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

, where he taught for five years before becoming an associate professor of

pure mathematics Pure mathematics is the study of mathematical concepts independently of any application outside mathematics. These concepts may originate in real-world concerns, and the results obtained may later turn out to be useful for practical applications, ...

at the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

in 1924. He was made a full professor the following year, and named distinguished professor of applied mathematics and astronomy in 1947. He remained at Texas until his retirement in 1966. Vandiver won the Frank Nelson Cole Prize of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

for his paper on

Fermat's Last Theorem In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers , , and satisfy the equation for any integer value of greater than 2. The cases and have been k ...

in 1931. In 1952 he used a computer to study it, proving the result for all primes less than 2000. A question he frequently asked about the

class group In number theory, the ideal class group (or class group) of an algebraic number field is the quotient group where is the group of fractional ideals of the ring of integers of , and is its subgroup of principal ideals. The class group is a mea ...

cyclotomic fields In number theory, a cyclotomic field is a number field obtained by adjoining a complex root of unity to , the field of rational numbers. Cyclotomic fields played a crucial role in the development of modern algebra and number theory because of ...

, and now known as Vandiver's conjecture, was first posed in an 1849 letter from

Ernst Kummer Ernst Eduard Kummer (29 January 1810 – 14 May 1893) was a German mathematician. Skilled in applied mathematics, Kummer trained German army officers in ballistics; afterwards, he taught for 10 years in a '' gymnasium'', the German equivalent of ...

Leopold Kronecker Leopold Kronecker (; 7 December 1823 – 29 December 1891) was a German mathematician who worked on number theory, algebra and logic. He criticized Georg Cantor's work on set theory, and was quoted by as having said, "'" ("God made the integers, ...

. For the academic year 1927–1928 Vandiver received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

. In 1934 he was elected to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

. In 1945 the U. of Pennsylvania gave him an honorary doctoral degree.Penn: Office of the University Secretary: Alphabetical Listing of Honorary Degrees
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* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Vandiver, Harry 1882 births 1973 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians Number theorists Cornell University faculty University of Texas at Austin faculty People from Philadelphia Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences