Oliver Dimon Kellogg (10 July 1878 – 27 August 1932) was an American mathematician.
His father, Day Otis Kellogg, was a professor of literature at the
University of Kansas
The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas. T ...
and editor of the American edition of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. In 1895 Oliver Kellogg began his undergraduate study at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
, where he earned his master's degree in 1900. With a
John S. Kennedy stipend he first studied at the
Humboldt University of Berlin
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative ...
and then in 1901/1902 at
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. At Göttingen in 1902 he earned his PhD with a thesis ''Zur Theorie der Integralgleichungen und des
Dirichlet'schen Prinzips'' under the direction of
David Hilbert. After completing his thesis, Kellogg became an instructor at Princeton and from 1905 at the
University of Missouri
The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus University of Missouri System. MU was founded in ...
, where he became a professor in 1910. In World War I he was a scientific advisor at the
Coast Guard Academy in
New London, Connecticut
New London is a seaport city and a port of entry on the northeast coast of the United States, located at the mouth of the Thames River in New London County, Connecticut. It was one of the world's three busiest whaling ports for several decade ...
, where he worked on submarine detection. Kellogg became a lecturer at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
in 1919, an associate professor in 1920, and a professor in 1927. He died of a heart attack while climbing
Doubletop Mountain near Greenville, Maine. Kellogg was married and had a daughter.
Kellogg is known for his work on
potential theory
In mathematics and mathematical physics, potential theory is the study of harmonic functions.
The term "potential theory" was coined in 19th-century physics when it was realized that two fundamental forces of nature known at the time, namely gra ...
, which was the subject of his dissertation and also his famous 1929 textbook ''Foundations of Potential Theory''.
In 1922 with
George David Birkhoff
George David Birkhoff (March 21, 1884 – November 12, 1944) was an American mathematician best known for what is now called the ergodic theorem. Birkhoff was one of the most important leaders in American mathematics in his generation, and during ...
he generalized the
Brouwer fixed point theorem to the
theorem of Birkhoff–Kellogg.
Among his doctoral students was
Arthur Copeland.
Works
* with
Earle Raymond Hedrick,
Applications of the calculus to mechanics' (Boston: Ginn, 1909)
''Foundations of Potential Theory.''Grundlehren der Mathematischen Wissenschaften, Springer-Verlag 1967.
See also
*
Kellogg's theorem
References
External links
*
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Kellogg, Oliver
20th-century American mathematicians
1878 births
1932 deaths
University of Missouri faculty
University of Missouri mathematicians