James Glaisher was a British mathematician. He was professor of mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Background
James Glaisher was born on November 5, 1848, in Lewisham, Kent. He was the eldest son of James Glaisher, an astronomer who was also interested in the calculation of numerical tables. His given names were derived from those of his father and his father’s colleagues in the founding of the British Meteorological Society, S. C. Whitbread and John Lee. His mother, Cecilia Louisa Belville, was a noted photographer.
Education
Glaisher attended St. Paul’s School, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated as second wrangler in 1871. He also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Dublin in 1892 and from Manchester University in 1902.
Career
After graduating Glaisher was appointed an assistant tutor at Trinity, where he remained for the rest of his life. Glaisher enjoyed teaching as well as mathematical research and participation in the meetings of scientific societies.
Glaisher’s first paper typified three of his continuing interests: special functions, tables, and the history of mathematics. It was written while he was an undergraduate and was communicated to the Royal Society by Arthur Cayley in 1870. It dealt with the integral sine, cosine, and exponential functions and included both tables which he had calculated and much historical matter. Glaisher’s first astronomical paper also typified his interest: “The Law of the Facility of Errors of Observations and on the Method of Least Squares,” published in the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society for 1872. This paper was inspired by a historical note in an American journal giving Robert Adrain credit for the independent discovery of Gauss’s law of errors.
Glaisher published nearly 400 articles and notes but never a book of his own. The nearest he came was the Report noted above, the Collected Mathematical Papers of Henry John Stephen Smith, which he edited, and volumes VIII and IX of the Mathematical Tables of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, published in 1940. The latter were revisions and extensions of number theoretical tables which he had completed in 1884.
Glaisher served as editor of two journals, Messenger of Mathematics and Quarterly Journal of Mathematics. Glaisher’s interest in students and publications affected American mathematics. He befriended an American student at Cambridge, Thomas S. Fiske, and took him to meetings of the London Mathematical Society. When he returned to Columbia University, Fiske organized the New York Mathematical Society (later the American Mathematical Society) in 1888 and copied the format of the Messenger when the Bulletin of the New York Mathematical Society was initiated.
Membership
Glaisher was active in the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also an honorary fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Astronomical Society, the London Mathematical Society, the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences, Washington.
Personality
Glaisher enjoyed walking, bicycling, collecting, travel. He was also interested in faience and pottery.
Physical Characteristics:
Glaisher was a tall, slim, upright man who retained good health until his last few years.
Quotes from others about the person
“Glaisher was underestimated as a mathematician. He wrote a great deal of very uneven quality, and he was old-fashioned, but the best of his work is really good.” - G. H. Hardy
“Glaisher was a mathematical stimulus to others rather than a pioneer.” - A. R. Forsyth