Washington Irving Stringham (December 10, 1847 – October 5, 1909) was an American mathematician born in

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. He was the first person to denote the

natural logarithm The natural logarithm of a number is its logarithm to the base of the mathematical constant , which is an irrational and transcendental number approximately equal to . The natural logarithm of is generally written as , , or sometimes, if ...

\ln(x)

where

x

is its argument. The use of

\ln(x)

in place of

\log_e(x)

is commonplace in digital calculators today.

"In place of $^\log$ we shall henceforth use the shorter symbol $\ln$ , made up of the initial letters of ''logarithm'' and of ''natural'' or ''Napierian''."

Stringham graduated from

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher ...

in 1877. He earned his PhD from

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consiste ...

in 1880. His dissertation was titled ''Regular Figures in N-dimensional Space'' under his advisor

James Joseph Sylvester James Joseph Sylvester (3 September 1814 – 15 March 1897) was an English mathematician. He made fundamental contributions to matrix theory, invariant theory, number theory, partition theory, and combinatorics. He played a leadership ...

. In 1881 he was in Schwartzbach,

Saxony Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...

, when he submitted an article on finite groups found in the

quaternion In mathematics, the quaternion number system extends the complex numbers. Quaternions were first described by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. Hamilton defined a quat ...

algebra. Stringham began his professorship in mathematics at Berkeley in 1882. In 1893 in Chicago, his paper ''Formulary for an Introduction to Elliptic Functions'' was read at the International Mathematical Congress held in connection with the

World's Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, h ...

. In 1900 he was an Invited Speaker at the

ICM ICM may refer to: Organizations * Irish Church Missions * Institut du cerveau et de la moelle épinière, a research center * Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling, University of Warsaw * International Confederatio ...

in Paris.

Personal life

Irving married Martha Sherman Day. The couple raised a daughter, Martha Sherman Stringham, (March 5, 1891- August 7, 1967).

References

Publications

* I. Stringham (1879
The Quaternion Formulae for Quantification of Curves, Surfaces, and Solids, and for Barycenters

American Journal of Mathematics The ''American Journal of Mathematics'' is a bimonthly mathematics journal published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. History The ''American Journal of Mathematics'' is the oldest continuously published mathematical journal in the United ...

2:205–7. * I. Stringham (1901
On the geometry of planes in a parabolic space of four dimensions

Transactions of the American Mathematical Society The ''Transactions of the American Mathematical Society'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of mathematics published by the American Mathematical Society. It was established in 1900. As a requirement, all articles must be more than 15 ...

2:183–214. * I. Stringham (1905) "A geometric construction for quaternion products",

Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society The ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'' is a quarterly mathematical journal published by the American Mathematical Society. Scope It publishes surveys on contemporary research topics, written at a level accessible to non-experts. ...

11(8):437–9.

External links

*
Portrait of W. Irving Stringham
from Mathematics Department

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

San Francisco Call 6 October 1909
re Irving Stringham death, from

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. {{DEFAULTSORT:Stringham, Irving 1847 births 1909 deaths 19th-century American mathematicians 20th-century American mathematicians Harvard College alumni Johns Hopkins University alumni People from Cattaraugus County, New York Mathematicians from New York (state)