List of things named after James Joseph Sylvester

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The mathematician J. J. Sylvester was known for his ability to coin new names and new notation for mathematical objects, [1] not based on his own name. Nevertheless, many objects and results in mathematics have come to be named after him: [2]

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Other things named after Sylvester

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In mathematics, the determinant is a scalar value that is a function of the entries of a square matrix. It characterizes some properties of the matrix and the linear map represented by the matrix. In particular, the determinant is nonzero if and only if the matrix is invertible and the linear map represented by the matrix is an isomorphism. The determinant of a product of matrices is the product of their determinants (the preceding property is a corollary of this one). The determinant of a matrix A is denoted det(A), det A, or |A|.

In linear algebra, the rank of a matrix A is the dimension of the vector space generated by its columns. This corresponds to the maximal number of linearly independent columns of A. This, in turn, is identical to the dimension of the vector space spanned by its rows. Rank is thus a measure of the "nondegenerateness" of the system of linear equations and linear transformation encoded by A. There are multiple equivalent definitions of rank. A matrix's rank is one of its most fundamental characteristics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">General linear group</span> Group of n×n invertible matrices

In mathematics, the general linear group of degree n is the set of n×n invertible matrices, together with the operation of ordinary matrix multiplication. This forms a group, because the product of two invertible matrices is again invertible, and the inverse of an invertible matrix is invertible, with identity matrix as the identity element of the group. The group is so named because the columns of an invertible matrix are linearly independent, hence the vectors/points they define are in general linear position, and matrices in the general linear group take points in general linear position to points in general linear position.

In mathematics, a Hadamard matrix, named after the French mathematician Jacques Hadamard, is a square matrix whose entries are either +1 or −1 and whose rows are mutually orthogonal. In geometric terms, this means that each pair of rows in a Hadamard matrix represents two perpendicular vectors, while in combinatorial terms, it means that each pair of rows has matching entries in exactly half of their columns and mismatched entries in the remaining columns. It is a consequence of this definition that the corresponding properties hold for columns as well as rows.

In mathematics, a unimodular matrixM is a square integer matrix having determinant +1 or −1. Equivalently, it is an integer matrix that is invertible over the integers: there is an integer matrix N that is its inverse. Thus every equation Mx = b, where M and b both have integer components and M is unimodular, has an integer solution. The n × n unimodular matrices form a group called the n × n general linear group over , which is denoted .

Sylver coinage is a mathematical game for two players, invented by John H. Conway. The two players take turns naming positive integers greater than 1 that are not the sum of nonnegative multiples of previously named integers. The player who cannot name such a number loses. For instance, if player A opens with 2, B can win by naming 3.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sylvester–Gallai theorem</span> Existence of a line through two points

The Sylvester–Gallai theorem in geometry states that every finite set of points in the Euclidean plane has a line that passes through exactly two of the points or a line that passes through all of them. It is named after James Joseph Sylvester, who posed it as a problem in 1893, and Tibor Gallai, who published one of the first proofs of this theorem in 1944.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terence Tao</span> Australian-American mathematician (born 1975)

Terence Chi-Shen Tao is an Australian-born mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he holds the James and Carol Collins chair. His research includes topics in harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, algebraic combinatorics, arithmetic combinatorics, geometric combinatorics, probability theory, compressed sensing and analytic number theory.

In mathematics, an integer matrix is a matrix whose entries are all integers. Examples include binary matrices, the zero matrix, the matrix of ones, the identity matrix, and the adjacency matrices used in graph theory, amongst many others. Integer matrices find frequent application in combinatorics.

In mathematics, a regular matroid is a matroid that can be represented over all fields.

Polyhedral combinatorics is a branch of mathematics, within combinatorics and discrete geometry, that studies the problems of counting and describing the faces of convex polyhedra and higher-dimensional convex polytopes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matrix (mathematics)</span> Array of numbers

In mathematics, a matrix is a rectangular array or table of numbers, symbols, or expressions, arranged in rows and columns, which is used to represent a mathematical object or a property of such an object.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard A. Brualdi</span> American mathematician

Richard A. Brualdi is a professor emeritus of combinatorial mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Sylvester's theorem or the Sylvester theorem may refer to any of several theorems named after James Joseph Sylvester:

Leonid Mirsky was a Russian-British mathematician who worked in number theory, linear algebra, and combinatorics. Mirsky's theorem is named after him.

In geometry, a Sylvester–Gallai configuration consists of a finite subset of the points of a projective space with the property that the line through any two of the points in the subset also passes through at least one other point of the subset.

In the mathematical theory of matroids, a minor of a matroid M is another matroid N that is obtained from M by a sequence of restriction and contraction operations. Matroid minors are closely related to graph minors, and the restriction and contraction operations by which they are formed correspond to edge deletion and edge contraction operations in graphs. The theory of matroid minors leads to structural decompositions of matroids, and characterizations of matroid families by forbidden minors, analogous to the corresponding theory in graphs.

In matroid theory, a Sylvester matroid is a matroid in which every pair of elements belongs to a three-element circuit of the matroid.

In linear algebra, a branch of mathematics, a (multiplicative) compound matrix is a matrix whose entries are all minors, of a given size, of another matrix. Compound matrices are closely related to exterior algebras, and their computation appears in a wide array of problems, such as in the analysis of nonlinear time-varying dynamical systems and generalizations of positive systems, cooperative systems and contracting systems.

References

  1. Franklin, Fabian (1897), "James Joseph Sylvester", Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 3 (9): 299–309, doi: 10.1090/S0002-9904-1897-00424-4 , MR   1557527 .
  2. MathSciNet lists over 500 mathematics articles with "Sylvester" in their titles, most of which concern mathematical subjects named after Sylvester.
  3. Borwein, P.; Moser, W. O. J. (1990), "A survey of Sylvester's problem and its generalizations", Aequationes Mathematicae , 40 (1): 111–135, CiteSeerX   10.1.1.218.8616 , doi:10.1007/BF02112289, S2CID   122052678 .
  4. Murty, U. S. R. (1969), "Sylvester matroids", Recent Progress in Combinatorics (Proc. Third Waterloo Conf. on Combinatorics, 1968), New York: Academic Press, pp. 283–286, MR   0255432 .
  5. Erwin H. Bareiss (1968), Sylvester's Identity and Multistep Integer- Preserving Gaussian Elimination. Mathematics of Computation, Vol. 22, No. 103, pp. 565578
  6. Berlekamp, Elwyn R.; Conway, John H.; Guy, Richard K. (1982), "Sylver Coinage", Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays, Vol. 2: Games in Particular, London: Academic Press Inc. [Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers], pp. 576, 606, MR   0654502 .
  7. Cantor, Geoffrey (2004), "Creating the Royal Society's Sylvester Medal" (PDF), British Journal for the History of Science, 37 (1(132)): 75–92, doi:10.1017/S0007087403005132, MR   2128208, S2CID   143307164