Wilczynski, E. J. (Ernest Julius), 1876-1932

Mathematician. Associate professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Chicago, 1910-1914; professor, 1914-1926.

Ernest Julius Wilczynski (1876-1932) joined the faculty of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Chicago in 1910 as an associate professor. He was promoted to professor in 1914, but ill health forced him into premature retirement in 1923 He was named professor emeritus in 1926.

Wilczynski was born in Hamburg, Germany. Shortly after he began school, his parents immigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago. It was in Chicago that Wilczynski completed his elementary and secondary education. In 1893, he enrolled at the University of Berlin, receiving his doctorate in mathematics in 1897 at the age of twenty-one. Unable to find an academic position, Wilczynski spent a year working for the Office of the Nautical Almanac in Washington, D. C. In 1898, he was appointed instructor in mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley, becoming an associate professor in 1906 Between 1903 and 1905, Wilczynski traveled throughout Europe and the United States as a research associate for the Carnegie Institution. From 1907 to 1910 he taught mathematics at the University of Illinois.

Wilczynski began his career as a mathematical astronomer, though his interests soon shifted to geometry. He is regarded as the creator of projective differential geometry. The author of numerous books and articles, Wilczynski served as vice-president of the American Mathematical Society, a member of the council of the Mathematical Association of America, and an associate editor of the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society. He was named laureate of the Royal Belgian Academy in 1909 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1919.