Mathematician:Frank Nelson Cole

American mathematician famous for finding the factors of the Mersenne number $M_{67}$. (It had already been demonstrated by Édouard Lucas in 1876 that it is not prime, but till this time the factors had not been found.) Cole's demonstration of this in 1903 took the form of a now famous lecture in which he performed the necessary arithmetic on a blackboard, delivering the only totally wordless lecture in recorded history.

The American Mathematical Society's Cole Prize was named in his honor.

Nationality
American

History

 * Born: September 20, 1861
 * Died: May 26, 1926

Books and Papers

 * 1890: The linear functions of a complex variable
 * 1892: The Diurnal Variation of Barometric Pressure
 * 1892: The theory of substitutions and its applications to algebra
 * 1913: The triad systems of thirteen letters

Also see

 * : Chapter $\text {A}.12$