Mathematician:Henry John Stephen Smith
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Mathematician
Irish mathematician remembered for his work in elementary divisors, quadratic forms, and the Smith-Minkowski-Siegel Mass Formula in number theory.
Devised the Smith Normal Form of a matrix.
Also worked on elliptic functions.
Nationality
Irish (then part of Great Britain).
History
- Born: 2 November 1826 in Dublin, Ireland
- Died: 9 February 1883 in Oxford, England
Theorems and Definitions
- Smith-Minkowski-Siegel Mass Formula (with Hermann Minkowski and Carl Ludwig Siegel)
- Smith Normal Form
- Smith-Volterra-Cantor Set (with Vito Volterra and Georg Cantor)
Definitions of concepts named for Henry John Stephen Smith can be found here.
Publications
- 1861: On systems of linear indeterminate equations and congruences (Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Vol. 151, no. 1: pp. 293 – 326) www.jstor.org/stable/108738
Notable Quotes
- Arithmetic is one of the oldest branches, perhaps the very oldest branch, of human knowledge; and yet some of its most abstruse secrets lie close to its tritest truths.
- -- Quoted in 1937: Eric Temple Bell: Men of Mathematics: They Say: What Say They? : Let Them Say
Also known as
The Stephen is sometimes omitted when reporting his name: Henry John Smith.
Sources
- John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "Henry John Stephen Smith": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
- 1937: Eric Temple Bell: Men of Mathematics ... (previous) ... (next): They Say: What Say They? : Let Them Say
- 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Smith, Henry John (1826-83)
- 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Smith, Henry John (1826-83)