Background

Ethnicity: Thomas Bromwich was descended from Bryan I'Anson, of Ashby St Ledgers, Sheriff of London and father of the 17th century 1st Baronet Sir Bryan I'Anson of Bassetsbury.

Thomas Bromwich was born on February 8, 1875, in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England, the son of John I'Anson Bromwich, a woollen-draper, and Eliza Ann Cook.

Education

Bromwich received his early education in Wolverhampton and in Durban, South Africa, where the family immigrated.

He entered Cambridge in October 1892 as a pensioner of Saint John’s College and graduated three years later as senior wrangler in a class that included E. T. Whittaker and J. H. Grace. He obtained a fellowship in 1897 but left Cambridge to become a professor of mathematics. In 1909, Bromwich received the Doctor of Science degree.

Career

In 1902 Thomas Bromwich became a professor of mathematics at Queen’s College (now the National University of Ireland Galway), Galway. He left Galway in 1907 and returned to a permanent post as a College lecturer at St. John's College, Cambridge.

The first two decades of Bromwich’s career were distinguished by numerous publications and vigorous teaching, but mental affliction led to diminished productivity in his later years and eventually to suicide.

The author of two books, two pamphlets, and some eighty papers, Bromwich is best known for his encyclopedic Introduction to the Theory of Infinite Series (1908). Although this book has been praised for its richness of detail and its abundance of examples, it has also been criticized for defects in its general structure - for example, its frequent failure to set oil' and to emphasize fundamental ideas. The book, based on Bromwich’s lectures at Galway, incorporates many of his own researches separately published between 1903 and 1908.

Another series of researches culminated in Bromwich’s Cambridge Tract, Quadratic Forms, and Their Classification by Means of Invariant Factors (1906). In these publications, Bromwich’s creative powers are most fully evident, for in them he both introduced English readers to Kronecker’s ideas and methods in the theory of quadratic and bilinear forms and advanced the knowledge of these forms.

Bromwich’s first publication, as well as many later papers, was in applied mathematics. Especially under the influence of George Stokes, Bromwich did significant work in the mathematics of electromagnetism and of other subjects as well (including lawn tennis). Most memorable is a series of papers that began in 1916 with "Normal Coordinates in Dynamical Systems." In this paper, Bromwich indicated how Oliver Heaviside’s much-criticized calculus of symbolic operators could be developed in a manner acceptable to pure mathematicians by treating his operators as contour integrals.

Achievements

• Thomas John I'Anson Bromwich was one of the most accomplished and most versatile among British mathematicians of the last fifty years, who made substantial contributions to pure mathematics, and to quadratic and bilinear forms and many consider his algebraic work to be his finest.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Quadratic forms and their classification by means of invariant-factors 1906
  • An Introduction to the Theory of Infinite Series 1908

Membership

• 

  In 1906, Thomas John I'Anson Bromwich was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

  Royal Society , United Kingdom

  1906

• 

  Thomas Bromwich was active in the London Mathematical Society, serving as its secretary (1911–1919) and vice-president (1919, 1920).

  London Mathematical Society (LMS) , United Kingdom

  1911 - 1920

Personality

Thomas John I'Anson Bromwich was sensible and kindly, and always willing to take trouble to obligу his friends or pupils; and whatever he did was done in the most business-like way imaginable.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Best pure mathematician among the applied mathematicians at Cambridge, and the best-applied mathematician among the pure mathematicians." - Godfrey Harold Hardy, British mathematician

Interests

• Sport & Clubs

  lawn tennis

Connections

Father:

John I'Anson Bromwich

Mother:

Eliza Ann Bromwich (Cook)

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Volume II
  1970