15 Facts About Joseph Wedderburn

Joseph Henry Maclagan Wedderburn FRSE FRS was a Scottish mathematician, who taught at Princeton University for most of his career.

Joseph Wedderburn was the tenth of fourteen children of Alexander Wedderburn of Pearsie, a physician, and Anne Ogilvie.

Joseph Wedderburn was educated at Forfar Academy then in 1895 his parents sent Joseph and his younger brother Ernest to live in Edinburgh with their paternal uncle, JR Maclagan Wedderburn, allowing them to attend George Watson's College.

Joseph Wedderburn then studied briefly at the University of Leipzig and the University of Berlin, where he met the algebraists Frobenius and Schur.

Joseph Wedderburn gained a PhD in algebra from the University of Edinburgh in 1908.

From 1906 to 1908, Joseph Wedderburn edited the Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society.

Joseph Wedderburn was the first person at Princeton to volunteer for that war, and had the longest war service of anyone on the staff.

Joseph Wedderburn served with the Seaforth Highlanders in France, as Lieutenant, then as Captain of the 10th Battalion.

Joseph Wedderburn returned to Princeton after the war, becoming Associate Professor in 1921 and editing the Annals of Mathematics until 1928.

Joseph Wedderburn received the MacDougall-Brisbane Gold Medal and Prize from the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1921, and was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1933.

In 1905, Joseph Wedderburn published a paper that included three claimed proofs of a theorem stating that a noncommutative finite division ring could not exist.

Joseph Wedderburn then showed that every finite-dimensional semisimple algebra can be constructed as a direct sum of simple algebras and that every simple algebra is isomorphic to a matrix algebra for some division ring.

Joseph Wedderburn's best known book is his Lectures on Matrices, which Jacobson praised as follows:.

Joseph Wedderburn was apparently a very shy man and much preferred looking at the blackboard to looking at the students.

Joseph Wedderburn had the galley proofs from his book "Lectures on Matrices" pasted to cardboard for durability, and his "lecturing" consisted of reading this out loud while simultaneously copying it onto the blackboard.