George Bruce Halsted

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Born: 23 Nov 1853 in Newark, New Jersey, USA
Died: 16 March 1922 in New York, USA

George Halsted was a student at the University of Princeton from where he was awarded his A.B. in 1875 and, three years later, his A.M. He was Sylvester's first student at Johns Hopkins University where he studied for his doctorate which was awarded in 1879. He also studied with Borchardt in Berlin during his doctoral studies. Halsted was given outstanding references by Sylvester to present to Borchardt.

Returning to the United States, Halsted was appointed a tutor at Princeton, a post he held between 1879-81, then from 1881 he was an instructor in postgraduate mathematics at Princeton until 1884. In that year he accepted a professorship at the University of Texas, a post he held for nineteen years.

From 1903 he held posts at St John's College, Annapolis, Maryland (1903), then Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio (1903-1906), and Colorado State College of Education, Greeley (1906-1914).

Writing in [1], H S Tropp says of Halsted:-

In the period when American mathematics had few distinguished names, the eccentric and sometimes spectacular Halsted established himself as an internationally known scholar, creative teacher and promoter and popularizer of mathematics.

There are a number of anecdotes showing Halsted's eccentric nature given in [2].

Halsted gave commentaries on the work of Lobachevsky, Bolyai, Saccheri and Poincaré and made translations of their works into English. He also studied the foundations of geometry which was his own mathematical speciality. His other main interest was in mathematical education and, as a mathematics educator, he criticised the careless way that mathematics was presented in the textbooks of the time.

After he retired, Halsted completed the Princeton University Biographical Questionnaire. In this he wrote:-

I am working as an electrician as there is nothing in cultivating vacant lots.

This seems to indicate that he felt badly treated by the mathematical community.