Joseph Miller Thomas (16 January 1898 – 1979) 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 the Thomas decomposition of algebraic and differential systems.
Thomas received his Ph.D., supervised by Frederick Wahn Beal, from 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 ...
with thesis ''Congruences of Circles, Studied with reference to the Surface of Centers''. He was a mathematics professor at
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
for many years. His graduate students include
Mabel Griffin (later married to L. B. Reavis) and
Ruth W. Stokes. In 1935, he was one of the founders of the ''
Duke Mathematical Journal
''Duke Mathematical Journal'' is a peer-reviewed mathematics journal published by Duke University Press. It was established in 1935. The founding editors-in-chief were David Widder, Arthur Coble, and Joseph Miller Thomas
Joseph Miller Thomas (16 ...
''. For the academic year 1936–1937, he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study.
Based upon earlier work by
Charles Riquier and
Maurice Janet
Maurice Janet (1888–1983) was a French mathematician.
Education and career
In 1912 as a student he visited the University of Göttingen. He was a professor at the University of Caen. He was an Invited Speaker of the International Congress of Ma ...
, Thomas's research was important for the introduction of involutive bases.
Selected publications
Articles
*with
Oswald Veblen
Oswald Veblen (June 24, 1880 – August 10, 1960) was an American mathematician, geometer and topologist, whose work found application in atomic physics and the theory of relativity. He proved the Jordan curve theorem in 1905; while this was lon ...
:
Note on the projective geometry of paths Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 11, no. 4 (1925): 207–209.
*The number of even and odd absolute permutations of ''n'' letters. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 31 (1925) 303–304.
Conformal correspondence of Riemann spaces Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 11, no. 5 (1925): 257–259.
Conformal invariants Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 12, no. 6 (1926): 389–393.
*Asymmetric displacement of a vector. Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 28 (1926) 658–670.
*with Oswald Veblen: Projective invariants of affine geometry of paths. Annals of Mathematics 27 (1926): 279–296.
*Riquier's existence theorems. Annals of Mathematics 30 (1928): 285–310.
*Matrices of integers ordering derivatives. Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 33 (1931) 389–410.
*The condition for an orthonomic differential system. Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 34 (1932) 332–338.
*Pfaffian systems of species one. Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 35 (1933) 356–371.
*Riquier's existence theorems. Annals of Mathematics 35 (1934): 306–311. (addendum to 1928 publication in ''Annals of Mathematics'')
*An existence theorem for generalized pfaffian systems. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 40 (1934) 309–315.
*The condition for a pfaffian system in involution. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 40 (1934) 316–320.
*Sturm's theorem for multiple roots. National Mathematics Magazine 15, no. 8 (1941): 391–394.
*Equations equivalent to a linear differential equation. Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 3 (1952) 899–903.
Books
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, Joseph Miller
1898 births
1979 deaths
20th-century American mathematicians
PDE theorists
University of Pennsylvania alumni
Duke University faculty
Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars