Background
He was born in Cazenovia, New York to parents Aaron White and Isadore Maria Haight.
He was born in Cazenovia, New York to parents Aaron White and Isadore Maria Haight.
He matriculated at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and graduated with honors in 1882 at the age of twenty-one. Subsequently, White studied at the University of Göttingen under Klein, and received his doctorate in 1891.
White excelled at Wesleyan in astronomy, ethics, Latin, logic, mathematics, and philosophy. At the university, John Monroe Van Vleck taught White mathematics and astronomy. Later, Van Vleck persuaded White to continue to study mathematics at the graduate level
White was Mathematics Department Chair at Northwestern University.
In 1915 White was elected a Fellow of the United States National Academy of Sciences. Northwestern conferred upon him an Doctor of Laws in the same year.
At the time of its 100th anniversary in 1932, Wesleyan conferred upon him an Doctor of Science Evelyn Wells Mary (1943).
"Henry Seely White—In memoriam".
Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 49: 670–671. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1943-07971-2.
National Academy of Sciences]
Linear systems of curves on algebraic surfaces in The Boston colloquium: lectures on mathematics delivered from September 2 to 5, 1903, before members of the American mathematical society, edited by Thomas Scott Fiske and William Fogg Osgood p.