Nathan Jacobson

Nathan Jacobson
Nathan Jacobson, 1974
Born	(1910-10-05)October 5, 1910 Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire
Died	Hamden, Connecticut
Nationality	American
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	U.N.C. at Chapel Hill Johns Hopkins University Yale University
Alma mater	Princeton University (Ph.D. 1934) University of Alabama (B.S. 1930)
Doctoral advisor	Joseph Wedderburn
Doctoral students	Georgia Benkart Charles W. Curtis Craig Huneke George Seligman Daya-Nand Verma Maria Wonenburger
Known for	Mathematics textbooks; Jacobson–Bourbaki theorem; Jacobson's conjecture; Jacobson density theorem; Jacobson radical; Jacobson ring
Notable awards	AMS Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement (1998)

Nathan Jacobson (October 5, 1910 – December 5, 1999) was an American mathematician.

Born Nachman Arbiser in Warsaw, Jacobson emigrated to America with his family in 1918. Recognized as one of the leading algebraists of his generation, he wrote more than a dozen standard textbooks. He graduated from the University of Alabama in 1930 and was awarded a doctorate in mathematics from Princeton University in 1934. While working on his thesis, Non-commutative polynomials and cyclic algebras, he was advised by Joseph Wedderburn.

Jacobson taught and researched at Bryn Mawr College (1935–1936), the University of Chicago (1936–1937), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1937–1943), and Johns Hopkins University (1943–1947) before joining Yale University in 1947. He remained at Yale until his retirement.

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as president of the American Mathematical Society from 1971 to 1973, and was awarded their highest honour, the Leroy P. Steele prize for lifetime achievement, in 1998. He was also vice-president of the International Mathematical Union from 1972 to 1974.

Selected works

Books

• Collected Mathematical Papers, 3 vols., 1989
• The theory of Rings. 1943
• Lectures in Abstract Algebra. 3 vols., Van Nostrand 1951, 1953, 1964, Reprint by Springer 1975 (Vol.1 Basic concepts, Vol.2 Linear Algebra, Vol.3 Theory of fields and Galois theory)
• Structure of Rings. AMS 1956
• Lie Algebras. Interscience 1962
• Structure and Representations of Jordan Algebras. AMS 1968
• Exceptional Lie Algebras. Dekker 1971
• Basic Algebra. Freeman, San Francisco 1974, Vol. 1; 1980, Vol. 2;
• PI-Algebras. An Introduction. Springer 1975
• Finite-dimensional division algebras over fields 1996

Articles

• with F. D. Jacobson:
• with C. E. Rickart:
• with C. E. Rickart:

See also

• Jacobson–Bourbaki theorem
• Jacobson's conjecture
• Jacobson density theorem
• Jacobson radical
• Jacobson ring

External links

• Nathan Jacobson at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• .
• An interview with William L. Duren, Nathan Jacobson, and Edward J. McShane about their experiences at Princeton