Thomas W. Hawkins Jr. (born 10 January 1938 in
Flushing, New York) is an American
historian of mathematics.
Hawkins defended his
Ph.D. thesis on ''"The Origins and Early Development of
Lebesgue's Theory of Integration"'' at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1968 under
Robert Creighton Buck
Robert Creighton Buck (30 August 1920 Cincinnati – 1 February 1998 Wisconsin), usually cited as R. Creighton Buck, was an American mathematician who, with Ralph Boas, introduced Boas–Buck polynomials. He taught at University of Wisconsin&ndash ...
. Since 1972 he has been based at
Boston University. Hawkins was an
invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1974 at
Vancouver and in 1986 at
Berkeley.
In 1997 Hawkins was awarded the
Chauvenet Prize
The Chauvenet Prize is the highest award for mathematical expository writing. It consists of a prize of $1,000 and a certificate, and is awarded yearly by the Mathematical Association of America in recognition of an outstanding expository article ...
for his article ''"The birth of
Lie's theory of
groups"'',
published in the
Mathematical Intelligencer in 1994.
[ In fall 2012 Hawkins was elected a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.]
Selected publications
Articles
* ''The Theory of Matrices in the 19th Century''. In: Ralph D. James (ed.): ''Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, Vancouver, 1974''. CMC, Vancouver 1975, vol. 2, , pp. 561–570.
* ''Hypercomplex numbers, Lie groups and the creation of group representation theory''. In: ''Archive for History of Exact Sciences'', vol. 8 (1971/72), , pp. 243–287.
* ''The origins of the theory of group characters''. In: ''Archive for History of Exact Sciences'', vol. 7 (1970), , pp. 142–170.
* ''New light on Frobenius creation of the theory of group characters''. In: ''Archive for History of Exact Sciences'', vol. 12 (1974), , pp. 217–243.
* ''Wilhelm Killing and the structure of Lie algebras''. In: ''Archive for History of Exact Sciences'', vol. 26 (1982), , pp. 126–192.
* ''Non-euclidean geometry and Weierstrassian mathematics. The background to Killing's work on Lie algebras''. In: ''Historia Mathematica
''Historia Mathematica: International Journal of History of Mathematics'' is an academic journal on the history of mathematics published by Elsevier. It was established by Kenneth O. May in 1971 as the free newsletter ''Notae de Historia Mathemat ...
'', vol. 7 (1980), , pp. 289–342.
Books
''Emergence of the theory of Lie groups. An Essay in the history of Mathematics 1869-1926''
(Sources and studies in the history of mathematics and physical series). Springer Verlag, New York 2000, .
* ''Lebesgue's Theory of Integration. Its Origin and Development''. 2nd edition. AMS Chelsea Books, New York 1979, ; reprint with corrections of original edition published by University of Wisconsin Press 1970;
Springer, New York 2013, .
References
1938 births
University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni
Boston University faculty
American historians of mathematics
Living people
Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
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