William Elwood Byerly (13 December 1849 – 20 December 1935) was an American mathematician 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 ...

where he was the "Perkins Professor of Mathematics". He was noted for his excellent teaching and textbooks. Byerly was the first to receive a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

from Harvard, and Harvard's chair "William Elwood Byerly Professor in Mathematics" is named after him. Byerly Hall in Radcliffe Yard,

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University—also known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute—is a part of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, a ...

, Harvard University is also named for him.

Textbooks

Among the textbooks he wrote are: * ''Elements of the Differential Calculus'' (1879) * ''Harmonic Functions'' (1906) * ''Problems in Differential Calculus'' * ''Introduction to the Calculus of Variations'' (1917) * ''Elements of the Integral Calculus'' (1881) * ''An Elementary Treatise on Fourier's Series'' (1893) * ''An Introduction to the Use of Generalized Coordinates in Mechanics and Physics'' (1916)

References

* J. L. Coolidge, "William Elwood Byerly—In memoriam", Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. Volume 42, Number 5 (1936), pp. 295–298. * Edwin H. Hall, "William Elwood Byerly (1849-1935)", Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 71, No. 10 (Mar., 1937), pp. 492–494.

Notes

1849 births 1935 deaths American textbook writers Harvard University alumni Harvard University Department of Mathematics faculty Harvard University faculty 19th-century American mathematicians 20th-century American mathematicians {{US-mathematician-stub