Henry Seely White
Born: 20 May 1861 in Cazenovia, New York,
USA
Died: 20 May 1943 in Poughkeepsie, New York,
USA
Henry White attended Cazenovia Seminary where his father was a teacher of elementary mathematics and surveying. From there White entered the Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut, which was founded in 1831 by a group of Methodists. At the Wesleyan University White was taught mathematics by Van Vleck's father.
After graduating with an A.B. in 1882, White was appointed an assistant in the astronomical observatory at the Wesleyan University then he moved to Centenary Collegiate Institute, Hackettstown, New Jersey where he taught mathematics and chemistry for a year before returning to the Wesleyan University to become a tutor. In 1887 he decided to study for his doctorate and travelled to Germany to study at the University of Göttingen for his doctorate between 1887 and 1890 under Klein's supervision, the doctorate being awarded for the thesis Abelsche Integrale auf singularitätenfreien, einfach überdeckten, vollständigen Schnittkurven eines beliebig ausgedehnten Raumes in 1891.
On his return to the United States, White was appointed to Clark University, then professor of pure mathematics at Northwestern University before being appointed, in 1905, as professor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Vassar College was then a college for women, founded to provide women with a quality of education ly only available to men. Grace Hopper was one who benefitted from the quality education provided there.
White was an excellent research mathematician. He worked on invariant theory, the geometry of curves and surfaces, algebraic curves and twisted curves. In [1] Archibald describes in detail a theorem proved by White in 1915:-
If seven points on a twisted cubic be joined, two and two, by twenty-one lines, then any seven planes that contain these 21 lines will osculate a second cubic curve. This theorem is more strictly fundamental than von Staudt's ... [which] can be deduced from White's.
Despite White's impressive mathematical contributions, he may be most important for his work for the American Mathematical Society where he instigated the Colloquium Lectures in 1896. He was a Colloquium Lecturer himself in 1903 when he lectured on Linear systems of curves on algebraic surfaces. White was president of the American Mathematical Society from 1907 to 1908.
In [1] Archibald notes his love of music and the fact that White's wife was the composer Mary Gleason. White is described as:-
Wise, kind, the soul of courtesy.