James Joseph Sylvester

James Joseph Sylvester was an English mathematician, born in London on 3 September 1814 as the son of Abraham Joseph, a Jewish merchant, and later adopted the surname Sylvester. He made fundamental contributions to matrix theory, invariant theory, number theory, partition theory and combinatorics. At age 14 he was a student of Augustus De Morgan at the University of London, now University College London, and he began his study of mathematics at St John's College, Cambridge in 1831, ranking second in the mathematical tripos of 1837 though he was not issued a degree. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1839 and was awarded its Copley Medal in 1880. He played a leadership role in American mathematics in the later half of the 19th century as a professor at the Johns Hopkins University and as founder of the American Journal of Mathematics, and at his death he was a professor at Oxford University.