Tom  Archibald


I am a Professor in the Dept. of Mathematics at Simon Fraser University, where I was Chair from 2005-2010. I just came off a year of leave.

Current Teaching

Right now I am teaching only one course, the undergraduate survey in history of mathematics, Math 380. This has about 80 students. We use Victor Katz's excellent book as a guide.

Current Research Interests

For the last few years, my research has concentrated on the French mathematical community of the period from 1870 to the First World War. I am working on a book on this subject; a good part of this is about Charles Hermite. I am also interested in the history of differential equations, especially PDEs, and especially their applications. I also work sporadically on the history of mathematics in Canada. I am very grateful to SSHRC for support for many projects over the years. Other recent interest include the use of mathematics in the first world war.

A CV is here.

 

Students

I have been very lucky in recent graduate students.

Currently I have one Ph. D. student, Jemma Lorenat, who has done work on Kronecker and joins us from CUNY Graduate Center. Her work concerns analysis and synthesis in early nineteenth-century geometry.

I am also cosupervising (with Nils Bruin and Michael Monagan) a master's thesis by Steven Kieffer on the role of Hensel's lemma in computational algebraic number theory from Hensel to Zassenhaus.

Four students have completed MSc theses:

Laura E. Turner, M. Sc. August 2007 on G. Mittag-Leffler. (Available here.)  Laura just finished a PhD. at Aarhus University.

Marcus E. Barnes, M. Sc. Nov. 2007 on John Charles Fields. Available here.

Menolly Lysne, M. Sc. June 2010 on P. S. de Laplace's relations with D'Alembert and Lagrange, and his early work in celestial mechanics and DEs. Soon available.

Brenda Davison, M. Sc. July 2010 on G. H. Hardy's early work. Soon available. Brenda is currently a Lecturer in our Department.

I welcome inquiries from students who would like to pursue graduate study the history of mathematics in the context of a Department of Mathematics.

Contact

I can be emailed at tarchi(at)sfu.ca.