Joseph Miller Thomas

Joseph Miller Thomas (16 January 1898 – 1979) was an American mathematician, known for the Thomas decomposition of algebraic and differential systems.[1]

Thomas received his Ph.D., supervised by Frederick Wahn Beal, from the University of Pennsylvania with thesis Congruences of Circles, Studied with reference to the Surface of Centers.[2] He was a mathematics professor at Duke University for many years. His graduate students include Mabel Griffin (later married to L. B. Reavis) and Ruth W. Stokes.[3] In 1935, he was one of the founders of the Duke Mathematical Journal. For the academic year 1936–1937, he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study.[4]

Based upon earlier work by Charles Riquier and Maurice Janet, Thomas's research was important for the introduction of involutive bases.[5][6]

  1. ^ Thomas Decomposition of Algebraic and Differential Systems by Thomas Bächler, Vladimir Gerdt, Markus Lange-Hegermann, Daniel Robertz, 2010
  2. ^ Joseph Miller Thomas at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. ^ Green, Judy; LaDuke, Jeanne (2009). Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhD's. American Mathematical Society. ISBN 9780821843765. (Griffin) Reavis and Stokes biographies on p.513-515 and p.580-582 of the Supplementary Material at AMS, respectively.
  4. ^ Joseph Miller Thomas | Institute for Advanced Study
  5. ^ Kondratieva, M. V. (1998). Differential and Difference Dimension Polynomials. Springer Science & Business Media. p. ix (preface). ISBN 978-0-7923-5484-0.
  6. ^ Astrelin, A. V.; Golubitsky, O. D.; Pankratiev, E. V. (2000). "Involutive bases of ideals in the ring of polynomials". Programming and Computer Software. 26 (1): 31–35. doi:10.1007/bf02759177. S2CID 29916317.