Person: Wilson (4), Edwin

Edwin Wilson was an American mathematician and statistician who worked in many different areas.

Wilson attended Harvard University, graduating with a A.B. in 1899.
Wilson graduated from Yale with a Ph.D. in 1901 and, in the same year, a textbook which he had written on vector analysis was published.
Wilson was appointed an Instructor at Yale in 1900 and, after being awarded his doctorate, Wilson went to Paris where he studied at the École Polytechnique, the Sorbonne and the Collège de France during 1902-3.
In 1906 Wilson was appointed as an assistant professor at Yale, then in 1907 he was appointed associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Wilson had been inspired by Gibbs to work on mathematical physics and he began to write papers on mechanics and the theory of relativity.
Wilson had already worked in a number of quite distinct areas and his work on aeronautics did not become the major topic for the rest of his career.
In 1922 Wilson left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to become Professor of Vital Statistics at the Harvard School of Public Health.
After he retired, Wilson spent a year in Glasgow, Scotland when he was Stevenson lecture on Citizenship.
Wilson received many honours.

Born 25 April 1879, Hartford, Connecticut, USA. Died 28 December 1964, Brookline, Massachusetts, USA.

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