John Charles Fields
John Charles Fields is perhaps one of the most famous Canadian Mathematicians of all time. He was born on May 14, 1863 in Hamilton Ontario, and died August 9, 1932 in Toronto, Ontario (Young, 1998). He graduated from the University of Toronto at the age of 21 with a B.A in Mathematics and went on to get his Ph.D. at John Hopkins University in 1887. Fields was very interested to study at John Hopkins University because apparently it was the only university in North America which really stressed research at the time (Fields Institute, n.d.). Fields did original research in the theory of algebraic functions that was influenced by his renowned
mentors, Fuchs, Schwarz, Frobenius and Plank (Fields Medal, n.d.). After two years of teaching at John Hopkins University, John Charles Fields then went on to teach at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, north of Pittsburgh (Fields Institute, n.d). He taught at Allegheny College for 4 years, and then decided that North America was not where he wanted to research, dissatisfied with the state of mathematics in North America, he left for Europe and spent the next 10 years of his life there (Fields Institute, n.d). He studied in Paris and Berlin with some of the best mathematicians of his time. His time there influenced him deeply and reinforced his convictions about the importance of mathematical research. Fields returned to Canada in 1902 as a special lecturer at the University of Toronto and remained at the University of Toronto for the rest of his life, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1909 and of the Royal Society of London in 1913 (Fields Institute, n.d). I think it is great to know that one of the greatest mathematicians of all time is Canadian, because most famous mathematicians are of European decent.
I think Fields lived a very interesting and dynamic life; he had a chance to pursue his dream of research in mathematics and got to become lifelong friends with…
