Clarence Raymond Adams. Photo: Johannes Meiner, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bays_Fueter_Chuard_Adams_Zurich1932.tif
Clarence Raymond Adams was an American mathematician and university professor whose research focused on linear partial difference and q-difference equations. A Brown University graduate and Harvard doctoral student of G. D. Birkhoff, he spent his academic career at Brown, where he chaired mathematics from 1942 to 1960.
Background
Adams was born on April 10, 1898, in Cranston, Rhode Island, at the Rhode Island Training School for Boys, where his father, Clarence Warren Adams, worked as an engineer. He was the son of Clarence Warren Adams and Leola Sarah Ranney Adams.
After graduating from Cranston High School, Adams spent a summer working as a night watchman at the institution where he had been born. He initially expected to study economics and enter business, but his interests shifted toward mathematics during his undergraduate years at Brown University, particularly under the influence of the mathematician Raymond Clare Archibald.
Education
Adams entered Brown University in 1915 and graduated in 1918. Brown, founded in 1764 in Providence, was one of the oldest colleges in the United States and had developed a substantial mathematical tradition by the time Adams studied there. He delivered the commencement address, “The Mathematical Concept of Infinity.”
He pursued graduate study at Harvard University and received his Doctor of Philosophy in mathematics in 1922 under the direction of George David Birkhoff. Harvard's graduate school was a major center of American mathematical research during this period, and Birkhoff was one of the country's leading mathematicians.
As a Sheldon Traveling Fellow of Harvard, Adams studied at the Sapienza University of Rome under Tullio Levi-Civita and at the University of Göttingen under Richard Courant in 1922–1923. Sapienza was one of Europe's historic universities, while Göttingen was internationally prominent for mathematical research and for the work of scholars associated with modern analysis and mathematical physics.
Career
Adams began his academic career at Brown University in 1923 as an instructor of mathematics. He became a full professor in 1936 and remained at Brown for the rest of his professional life. Brown's mathematics department was expanding its research and teaching activity during these decades, and Adams became one of the department's principal academic leaders.
His research concentrated on partial difference equations and q-difference equations, mathematical subjects concerned with relations among values of functions at discrete or multiplicatively separated arguments. His early work included studies of linear partial q-difference equations, equations of intermediate type, ordinary q-difference equations, and transformations of double sequences.
Adams chaired Brown's Department of Mathematics from 1942 to 1960. During his chairmanship the department added several scholars who later became prominent in mathematics, including Bjarni Jónsson, Herbert Federer, Frank M. Stewart, and E. H. Lee. He also served as faculty adviser to Rose Sedgewick Whelan, Brown's first doctoral graduate in mathematics, in 1929.
Adams retired from Brown in 1965 and died in Providence on October 15 of that year. His career linked Brown's undergraduate and graduate mathematical development with the international research networks represented by Harvard, Rome, and Göttingen.
Achievements
Adams developed a substantial body of research on linear partial difference and q-difference equations, including early systematic studies of equations involving both additive and multiplicative changes in variables.
As chair of Brown University's Department of Mathematics from 1942 to 1960, Adams helped guide the department's expansion and appointment of additional research mathematicians during the middle decades of the twentieth century.
Adams served as faculty adviser to Rose Sedgewick Whelan, Brown University's first doctoral graduate in mathematics, in 1929.
(A continuation of Adams's research on the general theory ...)
1929
Religion
Adams was a Baptist. Baptist Christianity emerged from the English-speaking Protestant tradition and emphasized the authority of Scripture, personal faith, baptism of professing believers, and the independence of local congregations.
His recorded religious outlook included the Christian commandment to love God wholly and to love one's neighbor as oneself. These principles formed part of the broader Protestant ethical tradition in which individual conscience, moral responsibility, and active concern for others were treated as central religious obligations.
Politics
Adams was identified with the Republican Party. In the United States, the party developed in the nineteenth century around opposition to the expansion of slavery and later encompassed traditions emphasizing constitutional government, economic development, civic institutions, and national strength.
His documented affiliation places him within the American two-party political system during the middle decades of the twentieth century. No specific office, faction, or policy position is recorded for him beyond this party identification.
Views
Quotations:
“The two greatest commandments are to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with your entire mind” and “love your neighbor as yourself.”
Membership
Adams participated in professional, learned, academic, and civic organizations associated with mathematics, science, higher education, and Rhode Island public life. His professional mathematical activity included service in the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America, while his broader affiliations included the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
He also belonged to the American Association of University Professors, the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Society of Colonial Wars, Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, Alpha Tau Omega, and the Providence Artists Club. These organizations represented the professional standards of American academic life, scientific exchange, historical and civic interests, and scholarly or social networks of the period.
Elected a Fellow in 1932.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
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United States of America
1932
Served as vice president from 1939 to 1940.
American Mathematical Society
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United States of America
Served on the Board of Governors from 1948 to 1950.
Mathematical Association of America
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United States of America
1948 - 1950
Served on the council from 1942 to 1944.
American Association of University Professors
,
United States of America
1942 - 1944
American Association for the Advancement of Science
,
United States of America
Royal Institution of Great Britain
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United Kingdom
Rhode Island Historical Society
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United States of America
Society of Colonial Wars
,
United States of America
Phi Beta Kappa
,
United States of America
Sigma Xi
,
United States of America
Alpha Tau Omega
,
United States of America
Providence Artists Club
,
United States of America
Personality
Adams described Pike's Peak as the high spot of his life and Death Valley as the low spot in response to a Brown class-reunion questionnaire, reflecting a documented interest in travel and a concise, humorous style of self-description.
Interests
Travel, including visits to Pike's Peak and Death Valley.
Connections
Adams married Rachel Blodgett on August 17, 1922. Blodgett was a mathematician who received a doctorate from Radcliffe College in 1921 and later worked as a mathematics tutor at Radcliffe. The couple lived in Providence after returning from Adams's 1922–1923 fellowship travel in Europe; their marriage produced no children.
Father:
Clarence Warren Adams
Engineer employed at the Rhode Island Training School for Boys in Cranston.
Mother:
Leola Sarah (Ranney) Adams
Wife:
Rachel Blodgett Adams
Mathematician who earned a doctorate from Radcliffe College in 1921 and later served as a mathematics tutor at Radcliffe.
References
History of the Math Department, Brown University
Documents Adams's Brown education, Harvard doctorate, international study, academic appointments, commencement address, and role in the development of Brown's mathematics department.
Adams, Clarence Raymond, Liber Brunoniana
Provides biographical information on Adams's Cranston upbringing, Brown and Harvard education, doctoral research, European fellowship, Brown career, travel, and death.
