'Ernest William Hobson'
FRS (
27 October 1856 -
19 April 1933) was an
English mathematician, now remembered mostly for his books, some of which broke new ground in their coverage in English of topics from
mathematical analysis. He was
Sadleirian Professor at the
University of Cambridge from 1910 to 1931.
He was born in
Derby, and was educated at
Derby School, the
Royal College of Mines, and
Christ's College, Cambridge. He became a Fellow of Christ's almost immediately after graduation. He made his way into research mathematics only gradually, becoming an expert in the theory of
spherical harmonics.
His 1907 work on
real analysis was something of a watershed in the British mathematical tradition; and was lauded by
G. H. Hardy. It included material on
general topology and
Fourier series that was topical at the time; and included mistakes that were picked up later (for example by
R. L. Moore).
Works
★ A Treatise on Trigonometry (1891)
★ Theory of Functions of a Real Variable (1907)
★ Squaring the Circle (1913)
★ The Domain of Natural Science (1923)
Gifford Lectures
★ The Theory of Spherical and Ellipsoidal Harmonics (1931)
See also
★
Tonelli-Hobson test