Cornell Mathematics Professors and their graduate students before 1940

The Mathematics graduate program at Cornell owes much to the vision and leadership of James Edward Oliver. His teacher, Benjamin Peirce, always said that "Jimmy Oliver was the best mathematician who had ever come under his notice."

This page provides, for each mathematics faculty who did advised graduate students, the complete list of the Cornell mathematics Ph.D.s they supervised. Only those faculty all of whose Cornell students obtained their Ph.D. before 1940 are included here. Except for James Oliver who come first, the faculty are listed in decreasing order of the number of Ph.D.s earned under their supervision. Two faculty, Ralph Agnew and Burton Wadsworth Jones, advised graduate students at Cornell both before and after 1940 and are not listed here. The years given for each faculty are the years of appointment at Cornell (not including emeritus appointment).

James Edward Oliver, 1871-1895

1886 Hiram John Messenger, Modern Methods in Geometric Conics.
1888 Cadwallader Edwards Linthicum, On the Rectification of Certain Curves, and Certain Series Involved.
1893 Ida Metcalf, Geometric Duality in Space.
1894 Annie Louise McKinnon, Concomitant Binary Forms in Terms of the Roots.
1895 Agnes Sime Baxter, On Abelian Integrals, a Resume of Neumann’s ‘Abelsche Integrele’ with Comments and Applications.

Virgil Snyder, 1895-1938 (43 Ph.D.s)

1902 Peter Field, On the Forms of Unicursal Quintic Curves.
1904 Clarence Lemuel Elisha Moore, On the Classification of the Surfaces of Singularities of the Quadratic Spherical Complex.
1906 Oscar Perry Akers, On the Congruence of Axes in a Bundle of Linear Line Complexes.
1906 Elmer Clifford Colpitts, On Twisted Quintic Curves.
1906 Charles Herschel Sisam, On the Classification of Scrolls of Order Seven Having a Rectilinear Directrix.
1908 Anna Lavinia Van Benschoten, The Birational Transformation of Algebraic Curves of Genus Four.
1909 Joseph Vance McKelvey, The Groups of Birational Transformations of Algebraic Curves of Genus 5.
1910 Helen Brewster Owens, Conjugate Line Congruences of the Third Order Defined by a Family of Quadrics.
1911 Paul Prentice Boyd, On the Perspective Jonquieres Involutions Associated with the (2, 1) Ternary Correspondence.
1912 Frank Millett Morgan, Involutorial Transformations.
1914 Anna Helen Tappan, Plane Sextic Curves Invariant Under Birational Transformations.
1915 Lewis Clark Cox, The Finite Groups of Birational Transformations of a Net of Cubics.
1916 Joseph Vital DePorte, Irrational Involutions on Algebraic Curves.
1917 Temple Rice Hollcroft, A Classification of General (2,3) Point Correspondences Between Two Planes.
1917 Anna Mayme Howe, The Classification of Plane Involutions of Order 3.
1923 Jesse Otto Osborn, A Study of the Rational Involutorial Transformations in Space Which Leave a Web of Sextic Surfaces Invariant.
1924 Marian Marsh Torrey, Classifications of Monoidal Involutions Having a Fixed Tangent Cone.
1926 Fay Farnum, On Triadic Cremona Nets of Plane Curves.
1927 Hazel Edith Schoonmaker, (later, Wilson), Non-Monoidal Involutions Having a Congruence of Invariant Conics.
1927 Howard Conway Shaub, Rational Involutorial Transformations in S(4) Which Leave Invariant Four-Fold-Infinity Quadric Varieties.
1928 Hannibal Albert Davis, Involutorial Transformations Belonging to a Linear Complex.
1930 Leaman Andrew Dye, Involutorial Transformations in S(3) of Order n with an n-1 Fold Line.
1930 Ethel Isabel Moody, A Cremona Group of Order Thirty-two of Cubic Transformations in Three-Dimensional Space.
1931 Evelyn Teresa Carroll (later, Rusk), Systems of Involutorial Birational Transformations Contained Multiply in Special Linear Line Complexes.
1931 Horace Newton Hubbs, Analytic Study of Rational Quintic Surfaces Having No Multiple Curves.
1931 William Robert Hutcherson, Maps of Certain Cyclic Involutions on Two Dimensional Carriers.
1931 Charles Chapman Torrance, On plane Cremona Triadic Characteristics.
1932 Amos Hale Black, Types of Involutorial Space Transformations Associated with Certain Rational Curves.
1932 John Montgomery Clarkson, Some Involutorial Line Transformations Interpreted as Points of V(2) of S(5).
1932 Ira Owen Horsfall, Transformations Associated with the Lines of a Cubic, Quadratic or Linear Complex.
1932 Edwin Joseph Purcell, Involutorial Space Cremona Transformations Determined by Non-Linear Null Reciprocities.
1932 August Sisk, The Plane Symmetric Quintic Cremona Involutions.
1933 Helen Schlauch Adams (later., Infeld), On the Normal Rational n-ic.
1933 Roberta Frances Johnson, Involutions of Order 2 Associated with Surfaces of Genera P_A=P_G=0,P_2=P_3=0.
1934 John Albert Hayden, The Weddle and Kummer Surfaces for Restricted Positions of Six Base Points.
1934 Gertrude K. Blanch, Properties of the Veneroni Transformation in S(4).
1935 Livingston Hunter Chambers, On (2,2) Planar Correspondences.
1935 Harriet Frances Montague, Certain Non-Involutorial Cremona Transformations of Hyperspace.
1935 Clarence Raymond Wylie, Space Curves Belonging to a Linear Line Complex.
1936 Lawrence Henry Bowen, Composite Double Curves on Rational Ruled Surfaces.
1936 Ross Arthur Harrison, Cremona Webs in S(3) Without Base Curves.
1937 Jesse Emmert Ikenberry, An Involutorial Transformation with a Multiple Correspondence on Lines Joining Conjugate Points.
1939 Sara Louise Nelson, Cremona Transformations Belonging to a Family of Cubic Curves.

Wallie A. Hurwitz, 1910-1954 (13 Ph.D.s)

1914 Joseph Rosenbaum, Mixed Linear Integral Equations over a Two-Dimensional Region.
1917 Chester Claremont Camp, An Extension of the Sturm-Liouville Expansion.
1920 George Merritt Robison, Divergent Double Sequences and Series.
1923 David Sherman Morse, Relative Inclusiveness of Certain Definitions of Summability.
1924 Julia Dale, Some Properties of the Exponential Mean.
1924 William Whitfield Elliott, Generalized Green's Functions for Compatible Differential Systems.
1927 Percy Austin Fraleigh, Regular Bilinear Transformations of Sequences.
1927 Florence Marie Mears, A Special Function of One Variable.
1927 Hillel Poritsky, Topics in Potential Theory.
1930 Ralph Palmer Agnew, The Behavior of Bounds and Oscillations of Sequences of Functions Under Regular Transformations.
1930 Walter Hetherington Durfee, Summation Factors which Are Powers of a Complex Variable.
1932 Robert Horton Cameron, Almost Periodic Transformations.
1934 Joseph Lev, The Effects of Linear Transformations on the Divergence of Bounded Sequences and Functions.

John Irwin Hutchinson 1894-1935 (6 Ph.D.s)

1904 John Wesley Young, On the Group of the Sign (0, 3, 2, 4, ∞) and the Functions Belonging to It.
1906 Richard Morris, On the Automorpic Functions of the Group (0,3,l_1,l_2,l_3).
1908 Clyde Firman Craig, On a Class of Hyperfuchsian Functions.
1910 Harold Bartlett Curtis, Hyperabelian Functions Expressible by Theta Series.
1917 Hans H. Dalaker, On the Automorphic Functions of the Group (0, 3; 4, 6).
1924 Julia Trueman Colpitts, Entire Functions Defined by Certain Power Series.

Francis Robert Sharpe 1907-1938 (6 Ph.D.s)

1914 Robert Wilbur Burgess, The Uniform Motion of a Sphere Through a Viscous Liquid.
1927 Arthur Keller Waltz, The Steady Flow of Liquid Through a Circular Hole in an Infinite Plane.
1928 William Thomas MacCreadie, On the Stability of the Motion of a Viscous Fluid.
1929 Joseph Crawford Polley, Rational Surfaces Defined by Linear Systems of Plane Curves C(3N):(A exp n))(B exp (n-1)).
1929 Franklin Grandey Williams, Families of Plane Involutions of Genus 2 or 3.
1931 Thomas Watkins Hatcher, Symmetric Strain in an Infinite Plate with a circular Hole.

James McMahon, 1884-1922 (4 Ph.D.s)

1888 Rollin Arthur Harris, The Theory of Images in the Representation of Functions.
1907 Francis Robert Sharpe, The General Circulation of The Atmosphere.
1912 Stanley Eugene Brasefield, A Study of Certain Force Fields.
1915 Carl Joseph West, On Certain Formulas for Representing Statistical Data.

David Clinton Gillespie, 1906-1935 (4 Ph.D.s)

1928 Ralph Lent Jeffery, The Uniform Approximation of a Sequence of Integrals and the Sequence of Functions Which Define a Definite Integral Containing a Parameter.
1931 Louis John Paradiso, Solutions of Bounded Variation of the Fredholm Stieltjes Integral Equation.
1933 Vivian Streeter Lawrence, Closed Orbits in Central Distance Force Fields.
1935 John Adam Fitz Randolph, Carathéodory Measure and a Generalization of the Gauss-Green Lemma.

George Abraham Miller, 1897-1901 (3 Ph.D.s)

1901 William Benjamin Fite, On Metabelian Groups.
1901 Harry Waldo Kuhn, On Imprimitive Substitution Groups.
1902 Henry Lewis (Louis) Rietz, On primitive groups of odd orders.

Walter Buckingham Carver, 1906-1948 (3 Ph.D.s)

1928 Howard Adams DoBell, On the Geometry of the Triangle.
1930 Harry Isler Lane, The Separation of the Projective Plane by the Lines Joining Six Points.
1932 Ralph Alexander Beaver, Finite Plane Euclidean Geometry.