Irving Stringham

Irving Stringham
Born December 10, 1847(1847-12-10)
Yorkshire, New York, U.S.
Died October 5, 1909(1909-10-05) (aged 61)
Berkeley, California, U.S.
Nationality American
Fields Mathematics
Institutions University of California at Berkeley
Alma mater Harvard College 1877
Johns Hopkins University PhD 1880
Doctoral advisor James Joseph Sylvester

Washington 'Irving' Stringham (December 10, 1847 – October 5, 1909) was a "Professor of Mathematics and Sometime Dean in the University of California"[1] born in Yorkshire, New York. Stringham is perhaps most notable as the first person to denote the natural logarithm as \ln(x) where x is its argument. The use of \ln(x) in place of \log_e(x) is commonplace in digital calculators today.

"In place of ^{e}\log we shall henceforth use the shorter symbol \ln, made up of the initial letters of logarithm and of natural or Napierian."[2]

Stringham graduated from Harvard College in 1877. He earned his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1880. He began his professorship in mathematics at Berkeley in 1882.[3] His PhD dissertation was titled Regular Figures in N-dimensional Space[4] under his advisor James Joseph Sylvester.

Biographical

Married to Martha Sherman Day and had a daughter, Martha Sherman Stringham, (March 5, 1891- August 7, 1967).

References

  1. ^ Charles Smith, Irving Stringham, Elementary algebra for the use of schools and colleges 2nd ed, (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1904).
  2. ^ Charles Smith, Irving Stringham, Elementary algebra for the use of schools and colleges 2nd ed, (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1904) p 437.
  3. ^ "In Memoriam, Dean Stringham" University of California Chronicle Vol XII (University Press, Berkeley, 1909) pp 1–20.
  4. ^ W.I. Stringham "Regular Figures in N-dimensional Space" American Journal of Mathematics Vol 3 (1880) pp 1-15.

External links