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Arthur Cayley

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Arthur Cayley

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English mathematician (1821-1895)

AI overview

Arthur Cayley was an English mathematician who lived from 1821 to 1895 and made significant contributions to his field during the nineteenth century. His work helped establish foundations in abstract mathematics that continue to influence the discipline today.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Wikidata facts

Instance of
human
Given name
Arthur
Gender
male
Citizenship
United Kingdom
Place of birth
Richmond
Place of death
Cambridge
Occupation
barrister
Position held
chairperson
Educated at
Lincoln's Inn
Languages spoken
English language
Academic degree
Doctor of Science
Doctoral advisor
William Hopkins
Doctoral student
Charlotte Scott
Field of work
mathematics
Image
Arthur Cayley.jpg
Show 11 more facts
Commons category
Arthur Cayley
date of birth
1821-08-16
date of death
1895-01-26
Commons gallery
Arthur Cayley
name in native language
Arthur Cayley
Erdős number
3
writing language
English language
maintained by WikiProject
WikiProject Mathematics
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Encyclopedic overview

Arthur Cayley (/ˈkeɪli/; 16 August 1821 – 26 January 1895) was an English mathematician who worked mostly on algebra. He helped found the modern British school of pure mathematics, and was a professor at Trinity College, Cambridge for 35 years.

He postulated what is now known as the Cayley–Hamilton theorem—that every square matrix is a root of its own characteristic polynomial, and verified it for matrices of order 2 and 3. He was the first to define the concept of an abstract group, a set with a binary operation satisfying certain laws, as opposed to Évariste Galois' concept of permutation groups. In group theory, Cayley tables, Cayley graphs, and Cayley's theorem are named in his honour, as well as Cayley's formula in combinatorics.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Arthur Cayley” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.