68 3. MATHEMATICAL CULTURES II
calculus text written by Abbe Jean Langevin, who was to become Bishop of Ri-
mouski in 1867, was published in 1848. For Canadians, as for Americans, the
importance of research as an activity of the mathematics professor arose only af-
ter the founding of Johns Hopkins University in 1876. In fact, the early volumes
of the American Journal of Mathematics contain articles by two Canadians, J. G.
Glashan (1844-1932), superintendent of schools in Ottawa, and G. Paxton Young
(1818-1889), a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto.
Simon Newcomb. An outstanding nineteenth-century Canadian mathematician was
Simon Newcomb (1835-1909), a native of Nova Scotia who taught school in a num-
ber of places in the United States before procuring a job at the Nautical Almanac
Office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he attended Harvard. He eventually
became director of the Naval Observatory in Washington, and after 1884 professor
of mathematics at Johns Hopkins.
H.S.M. Coxeter. The geometer Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter (1907-2003),
a native of Britain, emigrated to Canada in 1936 and played a leading role in
Canadian research in symmetry groups and symmetric geometric objects of all
kinds. His work on tessellations inspired many famous paintings by the Dutch
artist Maurits Escher (1898 1972).
John Synge. Although, strictly speaking, he counts as an Irish mathematician, who
was born in Dublin and died there, John Synge (1897-1995) taught at the University
of Toronto from 1920 to 1925 and again during the 1930s. From 1939 until 1948 he
worked in the United States before returning to Ireland. He is listed here because
of his daughter, Cathleen Synge Morawetz, who is discussed below.
John Charles Fields. One of the best-remembered Canadian mathematicians, John
Charles Fields (1863-1932), was a native of Hamilton, Ontario. He received the
Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1887 and studied in Europe during the 1890s. In
1902 he became a professor at the University of Toronto. He wrote one book (on
algebraic functions). Like many other mathematicians on the intellectual periph-
ery of Europe, much of his activity was devoted to encouraging research in his
native country. In the last few years of his life he established the Fields Medals,
the highest international recognition for mathematicians, which are awarded at the
quadrennial International Congress of Mathematicians. Beginning in 1936, when
two awards were given, then resuming in 1950, the Fields Medals have by tradition
been awarded to researchers early in their careers. As of 2002 about 40 mathemati-
cians had been so honored, among them natives of China, Japan, New Zealand, the
former Soviet Union, many European countries, and the United States.
Cecilia Krieger Dunaij. Canada has always taken in those fleeing oppression else-
where, and some of these refugees have become prominent mathematicians. One
example is Cypra Cecilia Krieger Dunaij (1894-1974), who studied mathematical
physics at the University of Vienna before coming to Toronto in 1920, where she
entered the university and took courses given by John Synge and John Fields. In
1930 she became the first woman to receive the doctoral degree in mathematics at
a Canadian university (Toronto) and only the third woman to receive a doctoral
degree in Canada.
