William Edward Story (April 29, 1850 – April 10, 1930) 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 ...

who taught at

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

and

Clark University Clark University is a private research university in Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1887 with a large endowment from its namesake Jonas Gilman Clark, a prominent businessman, Clark was one of the first modern research universities in the ...

. William was born in Boston to Isaac Marion Story (1818-1901) and Elizabeth Bowen Woodberry (1817-1888). He attended high school in Somerville, Massachusetts, and entered

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 higher le ...

in the fall of 1867. He graduated with honors in mathematics and began graduate study in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

in September 1871. In

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

he attended lectures of Weierstrass, Ernst Kummer,

Helmholtz Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Association, ...

and Dove. In

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

he heard Karl Neumann, Bruhns, Mayer, Van der Müll, and Engelmann. He earned a Ph.D. in Leipzig in 1875 with a dissertation "On the algebraic relations existing between the polars of a binary quantic." W.E. Story began his teaching career at Harvard as a

tutor TUTOR, also known as PLATO Author Language, is a programming language developed for use on the PLATO system at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign beginning in roughly 1965. TUTOR was initially designed by Paul Tenczar for use in co ...

. With the establishment of

in 1876, Story was recruited by Daniel Coit Gilman as an Associate.

J. J. 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 ...

led the program in mathematics. Until 1879, Story was the only other instructor in mathematics besides Sylvester. Story was instrumental in starting two publication projects: ''The Johns Hopkins University Circulars'' was a student paper detailing classes and attendees. American Journal of Mathematics was also started as a joint effort of Sylvester and Story, but soon Story was replaced by Thomas Craig as managing editor. In 1893 Story became an

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a ...

; he taught courses on

quaternions 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 quatern ...

elliptic function In the mathematical field of complex analysis, elliptic functions are a special kind of meromorphic functions, that satisfy two periodicity conditions. They are named elliptic functions because they come from elliptic integrals. Originally those in ...

s, invariant theory, mathematical astronomy and mathematical elasticity. Story also introduced introductory courses for graduate students, surveying the entire field. The monthly Mathematical Seminary became a weekly mathematical society, divided into three parts; Story oversaw the section on geometry and quaternions. When

was established in 1889, President

G. Stanley Hall Granville Stanley Hall (February 1, 1846 – April 24, 1924) was a pioneering American psychologist and educator. His interests focused on human life span development and evolutionary theory. Hall was the first president of the American Psy ...

hired

Oskar Bolza Oskar Bolza (12 May 1857 – 5 July 1942) was a German mathematician, and student of Felix Klein. He was born in Bad Bergzabern, Palatinate, then a district of Bavaria, known for his research in the calculus of variations, particularly influe ...

and Story to lead the mathematics department. Henry Taber was hired as

docent The title of docent is conferred by some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks at or below the full professor rank, similar to a British readership, a French " ''maître de conf ...

, he had studied with Story at Johns Hopkins. Solomon Lefschetz and other mathematicians contributed to making Clark the leading site for mathematics in the USA until 1892 when

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

eclipsed it.Cooke, Roger and Rickey, V. Frederick (1989) "W.E. Story of Hopkins and Clark" in ''A Century of Mathematics in America'', Part III,

Peter Duren Peter Larkin Duren (30 April 1935, New Orleans, Louisiana – July 10, 2020) was an American mathematician. He specialized in mathematical analysis and was known for the monographs and textbooks he has written. Academic Career Duren receiv ...

and others, editors,

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, ...

pages 29–76, Clark University ceased its graduate program in 1919 and Story retired in 1921.

References

External links

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* * 1850 births 1930 deaths People from Boston 19th-century American mathematicians 20th-century American mathematicians Leipzig University alumni Clark University faculty Harvard University alumni Johns Hopkins University faculty American expatriates in Germany {{US-mathematician-stub