Frank Nelson Cole, Ph.D. (September 20, 1861 – May 26, 1926) was an American mathematician, born in Ashland, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard, where he lectured on mathematics from 1885 to 1887.
Later, he was employed at the University of Michigan and Columbia University. Professor Cole became secretary of the American Mathematical Society in 1895 and an editor of its Bulletin in 1897.
Cole published a number of important papers, including ...
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Frank Nelson Cole, Ph.D. (September 20, 1861 – May 26, 1926) was an American mathematician, born in Ashland, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard, where he lectured on mathematics from 1885 to 1887.
Later, he was employed at the University of Michigan and Columbia University. Professor Cole became secretary of the American Mathematical Society in 1895 and an editor of its Bulletin in 1897.
Cole published a number of important papers, including The Diurnal Variation of Barometric Pressure (1892).
In 1903 Cole famously made a presentation to a meeting of the American Mathematical Society where he identified the factors of the Mersenne number 2-1, or M67. Édouard Lucas had demonstrated in 1876 that M67 must have factors (i.e., is not prime), however he was unable to determine what those factors were. During Cole's so-called "lecture", he approached the chalkboard and in complete silence proceeded to calculate the value of M67, with the result being 147,573,952,589,676,412,927. Cole...
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