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Glaisher, James Whitbread Lee

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Born Lewisham, Kent, England, 5 November 1848

Died Cambridge, England, 7 December 1928

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher was a pure mathematician and mathematical astronomer who served in leadership positions in the Royal Astronomical Society for 55 years.

The eldest son of the English astronomer/meteorologist James Glaisher , young Glaisher attended Saint Paul’s School in London and then Trinity College, Cambridge, where, in 1871, he graduated as second wrangler. He won the Campden Exhibition in 1867 and the Perry Exhibition in 1869. In 1871, Glaisher was elected to a fellowship and a lectureship in mathematics at Trinity College and held these positions until 1901. He received a D.Sc. degree from Cambridge in 1887, the first year that the degree was offered at the university.

Glaisher became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society [RAS] shortly before his graduation in 1871, and was elected to the society’s council in 1874. He was reelected to the council continuously and was in the...

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Selected References

  • Boyer, Carl B. (1985). A History of Mathematics. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

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  • Cajori, Florian (1993). A History of Mathematical Notations. New York: Dover.

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  • Forsyth, A. R. (rev. by J. J. Gray) (2004). “Glaisher, James Whitbread Lee.” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Mathew and Brian Harrison. Vol. 22, pp. 412–413. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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  • Glaisher, J. W. L. (1874). “The Committee On Mathematical Tables.” In Report of the Forty-Third Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science Held at Bradford in September 1873, pp. 1175. London: John Murray.

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  • Taylor, R. J. (ed.) (1987). History of the Royal Astronomical Society. Vol. 2, 1920–1980. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications.

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  • Turner, Herbert Hall (1929). “James Whitbread Lee Glaisher.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 89: 300–308.

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Correspondence to Robert A. Garfinkle .

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Garfinkle, R.A. (2014). Glaisher, James Whitbread Lee. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_523

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