Frank Nelson Cole
{{short description|American mathematician}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name = Frank Nelson Cole
| image = Frank_N_Cole.jpg
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| birth_date = {{Birth date|1861|9|20|mf=y}}
| birth_place = Ashland, Massachusetts, United States
| death_date = {{death date and age|1926|5|26|1861|9|20|mf=y}}
| death_place = New York City, New York, United States
| residence =
| citizenship =
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| field = Mathematics
| work_institution = Harvard University
University of Michigan
Columbia University
American Mathematical Society
| doctoral_advisor = Felix Klein
| doctoral_students = Eric Temple Bell
George Abram Miller
Louis Weisner
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Frank Nelson Cole (September 20, 1861 – May 26, 1926) was an American mathematician. He is most famous for discovering the factors of the Mersenne number 267 − 1.
Life and works
Cole was born in Ashland, Massachusetts. When he was very young, the family moved to Marlborough, Massachusetts where he attended school and graduated from Marlborough High School. He was then educated at Harvard, where he lectured on mathematics from 1885 to 1887.
Later, he was employed at the University of Michigan (from 1888 to 1895) and Columbia University{{cite journal|author=Fiske, T. S.|authorlink=Thomas Fiske|title=Frank Nelson Cole|journal=Bull. Amer. Math. Soc.|year=1927|volume=33|issue=6|pages=773–777|mr=1561460|doi=10.1090/s0002-9904-1927-04477-9|doi-access=free}}
(from 1895 until his death in 1926).
Professor Cole became the Secretary of the American Mathematical Society in 1895 and an editor of the Bulletin of the AMS in 1897.
Cole published a number of important papers, including The Diurnal Variation of Barometric Pressure (1892). In 1893 in Chicago, his paper On a Certain Simple Group (the group is PSL(2,8)) was read (but not by him) at the International Mathematical Congress held in connection with the World's Columbian Exposition.{{cite book|chapter=On a Certain Simple Group by F. N. Cole|title=Mathematical papers read at the International Mathematical Congress held in connection with the World's Columbian Exposition|year=1896|pages=40–43|location=NY|publisher=Macmillan as publisher for the AMS|url=http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3841648;view=1up;seq=62}}{{cite book|editor=Case, Bettye Anne|editor-link=Bettye Anne Case|title=A Century of Mathematical Meetings|chapter=Come to the Fair: The Chicago Mathematical Congress of 1893 by David E. Rowe and Karen Hunger Parshall|year=1996|publisher=American Mathematical Society|pages=67–68|isbn=9780821804650|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UnkYqxyWGz8C&pg=PA67}}{{cite journal|author=Gallian, Joseph A.|authorlink=Joseph Gallian|title=The Search for Finite Simple Groups|journal=Mathematics Magazine|date=September 1976|volume=49|issue=4|pages=163–174|url=https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/22/Allendoerfer/0025570x.di021096.02p01365.pdf|doi=10.2307/2690115|jstor=2690115}}
On October 31, 1903, Cole famously made a presentation to a meeting of the American Mathematical Society where he identified the factors of the Mersenne number 267 − 1, or M67.{{citation |last=Cole |first=F. N. |title=On the factoring of large numbers |jfm=34.0216.04 |journal=Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. |year=1903 |volume=10 |issue=3
|pages=134–137 |doi=10.1090/S0002-9904-1903-01079-9 |doi-access=free}}. Édouard Lucas had demonstrated in 1876 that M67 must have factors (i.e., is not prime), but he was unable to determine what those factors were. During Cole's so-called "lecture", he approached the chalkboard and in complete silence proceeded to calculate the value of M67, with the result being 147,573,952,589,676,412,927. Cole then moved to the other side of the board and wrote 193,707,721 × 761,838,257,287, and worked through the calculations by hand. Upon completing the multiplication and demonstrating that the result equaled M67, Cole returned to his seat, not having uttered a word during the hour-long presentation. His audience greeted the presentation with a standing ovation. Cole later admitted that finding the factors had taken "three years of Sundays".{{citation |first=N. |last=Gridgeman |title=The search for perfect numbers |journal=New Scientist |year=1963 |issue=334 |pages=86–88 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0Dta7OkNhyoC&pg=PA87 }}.
Cole died in New York City, aged 64. The American Mathematical Society's Cole Prizes in Algebra and Number Theory are named in his honor.
Notes
{{Reflist}}
See also
External links
- {{Internet Archive author |sname=Frank Nelson Cole |sopt=t}}
- {{MacTutor Biography|id=Cole}}
- {{MathGenealogy|id=7611}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cole, Frank Nelson}}
Category:19th-century American mathematicians
Category:20th-century American mathematicians
Category:Columbia University faculty
Category:Harvard College alumni