Department of Mathematics and Statistics, McGill University
The Department of Mathematics and Statistics is an academic department at McGill University. It is located in Burnside Hall at McGill's downtown campus in Montreal.
 Burnside Hall, home to the Department of Mathematics and Statistics | |
| Type | Academic department |
|---|---|
Parent institution | Faculty of Science McGill University |
| Location | 45.5047573°N 73.5748978°W |
| Website | mcgill |
  Location in Montreal | |
History
Mathematics was taught at McGill as early as 1848 when it was a discipline of Natural Philosophy.[1]
Mathematics at McGill was initially divided into two largely independent departments, one under the Faculty of Arts and Science and another under the Faculty of Engineering; the two departments merged in 1924 under the chairmanship of Daniel Murray.[2]:406 Still, mathematics remained subsidiary to other programs, owing to McGill's emphasis on engineering and British-style applied mathematics.[3]:105 Until 1945, Mathematics was almost wholly a service department with only seven faculty members. Though a small graduate program was shared with the Physics Department, most of the students in the program were headed for further graduate work in physics.[4]:342
In 1945, Department members Lloyd Williams and Gordon Pall founded the Canadian Mathematical Congress, which took the lead in persuading the National Research Council to make funds available for the support of pure mathematics.[5] Meanwhile, as chairman of the Department, A. H. S. Gillon initiated in 1945 an Applied Mathematics program and in 1948 recommended for appointment to a professorship Hans Zassenhaus, a pure mathematician who began to attract a number of strong graduate students into his program. Zassenhaus, along with Professors Wacław Kozakiewicz, Charles Fox, Edward Rosenthall, and Phil Wallace, was instrumental in developing the Department's Graduate School.[2]:409 McGill's first mathematics Ph.D. was awarded to Joachim Lambek, who obtained his doctorate in 1950 under Zassenhaus's supervision.[6]
In 1963, as public funds came to the university and a larger budget became available, the newly appointment chairman, Edward Rosenthall, concentrated on building a balanced and well-qualified academic team, which could sustain a vigorous graduate program along with the demands made upon the Department in a service capacity. Analysis and algebra became strong elements in the Department's program in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, and there was also a lively interest in statistics and in applied mathematics.[4]:343 Research in category theory began in 1966, when Lambek decided to promote the subject at McGill.[7] The number of full-time staff in the Department had grown to 36 by 1960, and to 56 by 1970.[4]:362
The Departmental library was established in 1971, and dedicated in 1987 in honour of Edward Rosenthall.[8] At the time of its closure in 2015, the Rosenthall Library held over 14,000 mathematics journals dating from the nineteenth century, more than 10,000 monographs, as well as a collection of rare mathematics books.[8][9]
Research
Members of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics are active in directing research in algebraic geometry, analysis, applied mathematics, category theory and logic, discrete mathematics, geometric group theory, number theory, and probability and statistics.[10]
Notable members
Current members
- Michael Barr[7]
- Henri Darmon, Coxeter–James Prize (1997), Cole Prize (2017), CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize (2017)
- Stephen Drury
- Christian Genest FRSC
- Pengfei Guan FRSC, Sloan Fellowship (1993–1995)
- Jacques Hurtubise FRSC, Coxeter–James Prize (1993)
- Niky Kamran FRSC, CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize (2014)
- Michael Makkai[7]
- Arak Mathai
- Daniel Wise FRS FRSC, CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize (2016), Guggenheim Fellowship (2016)
Former members
- Marta Bunge, Professor (1969–2003)[7]
- Donald Dawson FRS FRSC, Associate Professor (1963–1970, 2000–2010), CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize (2004)[11]
- Arthur Eve CBE FRS FRSC
- Charles Fox, Professor (1949–1967)[12]
- Lisa Jeffrey FRSC, Associate Professor (1995–1998)[13]
- Alexander Johnson, Professor (1857–1903)[14]
- Peter Hammer, Faculty Member (1969–1972)
- James Harkness FRSC, Professor (1903–1923)[15]
- Carl Herz, Professor (1970–1995)[16]
- John David Jackson, Assistant then Associate Professor of mathematical physics (1950-1957) [17]
- Donald Kingsbury, Assistant Professor (1956–1986)[18]
- Joachim Lambek FRSC Professor (1950–1992)[19]
- Edmund Allen Meredith[20]
- Daniel Murray, Professor (1908–1930), Chairman (1924–1930)[21]
- Ram Murty FRSC, Professor (1982–1996)[22]
- Jonathan Pila FRS, Assistant Professor (2003–2005)[23]
- Maksym Radziwill, Assistant Professor (2016–2018)
- Hans Schwerdtfeger FRSC, Professor (1957–1983)
- Jean-Pierre Serre, Visitor (1967)[24]
- Charles Thompson Sullivan FRSC, Professor (1908–1946), Departmental Chair (1930–1947)[25]
- Endre Szemerédi, Visiting Professor (1980); Pólya Prize (1975), Steele Prize (2008), Abel Prize (2012)[26]
- Henry Marshall Tory[27]
- Phil Wallace[28]
- Peter Wynn
- Alexandru Zaharescu, Post-Doctoral Fellow (1997–1999)[29]
- Hans Zassenhaus, Professor (1949–1959)[30]
References
- Caya, Marcel, ed. (1985). "Arts and Science". Guide to Archives Resources at McGill University. 1. McGill University Archives. ISBN 0-7717-0117-9.
- Genest, Christian (June 2015). "A Conversation with Herbert Tate: Mathematics Educator and Builder". The Mathematics Enthusiast. 12 (1): 404–416. ISSN 1551-3440.
- Archibald, T. (2016). "Mathematics in Canada: An Institutional Portrait (1900-1980)". Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences. 66 (176): 101–117. doi:10.1484/j.arihs.5.112882.
- Frost, Stanley Brice (1984). McGill University: For the Advancement of Learning. II. Kingstron and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 0-7735-0422-2.
- Grattan-Guinness, Ivor, ed. (1994). "Mathematics in Canada". Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences. 2. London: Routledge. p. 1523. ISBN 0-415-09239-6.
- Darmon, Henri (2 December 2014). Resolution on the Death of Emeritus Professor Joachim (Jim) Lambek, Department of Mathematics and Statistics (PDF). Faculty of Science: Meeting of Faculty. Montreal: McGill University. p. 2.
- Bunge, Marta (January 2006). "Category Theory at McGill, 1966-2006 (A Personal View)". Montreal. Cite journal requires
|journal=(help) - "Edward Rosenthall Mathematics and Statistics Library". Historical Collections. McGill University. Retrieved 31 October 2018.
- Polak, Jason (24 January 2016). "The Rosenthall Library". Aleph Zero Categorical.
- "Research". Department of Mathematics and Statistics. McGill University. Retrieved 31 October 2018.
- Dawson, Donald A. "Donald A. Dawson". School of Mathematics and Statistics. Carleton University. Retrieved 31 October 2018.
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F. (July 2009), "Charles Fox", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
- Jeffrey, Lisa (15 April 2012). "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Department of Mathematics. University of Toronto. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 November 2018. Retrieved 31 October 2018.
- Cohen, Montague (1991). Möller, Hans (ed.). "My Dear Eve... The Letters of Ernest Rutherford to Arthur Eve, Part III (1912–1914)". Fontabus. McGill University Libraries. IV: 93. ISSN 0838-2026.
- "Prof. J. Harkness". Nature. Nature Publishing Group. 113 (2829): 91. 19 January 1924. Bibcode:1924Natur.113Q..91.. doi:10.1038/113091a0.
- "Carl Herz (1930–1995)" (PDF). Notices of the AMS. 43 (7): 768–771. July 1996.
- Cahn, Robert N. "J. David Jackson, A Biographical Memoir" (PDF). National Academy of Science.
- Kingsbury, Donald (April 1967). "The Systems Analysis of Learning Environments". McGill Journal of Education. 2 (1). ISSN 1916-0666.
- Darmon, Henri (2 December 2014). Resolution on the Death of Emeritus Professor Joachim (Jim) Lambek, Department of Mathematics and Statistics (PDF). Meeting of Faculty. Montreal: Faculty of Science, McGill University. p. 2.
- Martin, Ged (2014). The John A. Macdonald Retrospective. Dundurn. ISBN 9781459730298.
- Caya, Marcel, ed. (1985). "McGill Teaching and Research". Guide to Archives Resources at McGill University. 2–3. McGill University Archives. ISBN 0-7717-0119-5.
- Cojocaru, Alina Carmen; David, Chantal; Pappalardi, Francesco, eds. (2015). Scholar: A Scientific Celebration Highlighting Open Lines of Arithmetic Research (PDF). Contemporary Mathematics. 655. Providence, Rhode Island: American Mathematical Society. p. xi. doi:10.1090/conm/655. ISBN 9781470414573. ISSN 1098-3627.
- "Jonathan Pila". Academia Europa. 25 May 2016. Retrieved 31 October 2018.
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F. (November 2014), "Jean-Pierre Albert Achille Serre", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
- "Dr. Sullivan". McGill Daily. 35 (65). 22 January 1948.
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F. (April 2016), "Endre Szemerédi", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
- Corbett, Edward Annand (1992). Henry Marshall Tory: A Biography. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. ISBN 0-88864-250-4.
- Wallace, P. R. (November 1993). "The Beginnings of Theoretical Physics in Canada". Physics in Canada: 358–364.
- Darmon, Henri. "Post-Doctoral Fellows". Department of Mathematics and Statistics. McGill University.
- "Hans Zassenhaus". Department of Mathematics. Ohio State University. Retrieved 31 October 2018.