Person: Huntington, Edward Vermilye

Edward Huntington was an American mathematician who worked in what are now known as metamathematics and model theory.

Huntington attended Harvard College, and he was awarded his A.B. in 1895, followed by his A.M. two years later.
After being awarded the Master's degree, Huntington was appointed to Williams College.
For two years Huntington worked as a mathematics instructor at Williams College at Williamstown, Massachusetts.
In 1899 Huntington left the United States to study for his doctorate in Europe.
Huntington's doctorate was awarded for a thesis on algebra.
Returning to the United States, Huntington again was appointed as an instructor in Harvard in 1901.
Huntington was promoted to associate professor in 1915 and to professor of mechanics at Harvard in 1919.
Huntington was interested in the foundations of mathematics.
This is now known as Huntington's theorem.
Huntington himself called these postulates, rather than axioms, and was careful to distinguish between 'postulate' and his own use of the term 'axiom'.
Huntington's book The Continuum and other types of serial order (1917) was a standard work on set theory for many years.
One might wonder why, given these interests, Huntington was appointed as Professor of Mechanics in 1919.
Huntington proposed a method of appointing representatives to the US Congress.
This was published as "Edward V Huntington, Methods of Apportionment in Congress.
In 1919 Huntington was president of the Mathematical Association of America, an organisation he helped to found, and his presidential address considered mathematical problems related to statistics.

Born 26 April 1874, Clinton, New York, USA. Died 25 November 1952, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

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O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive