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His primary education was in several schools in Nebraska. Details of his high school education are sparse and it is not known whether a picture taken in 1885 showing him in military uniform means that he served in the military or whether it was a uniform for the high school he attended. He was educated at the University of Nebraska, obtaining his A.B. in 1893 and then worked for the railroads as a surveyor before returning to the University of Nebraska to study for his Master's degree which was awarded in 1896. Before undertaking research he was headmaster of the Worthington Military Academy in 1896-97. He then went to the University of Chicago where he undertook research under the supervision of Eliakim Moore . Lehmer was awarded his Ph.D. in 1900 from the University of Chicago for his thesis Asymptotic Evaluation of Certain Totient-Sums. After the award of his doctorate Lehmer was appointed in 1900 as an instructor in mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley. Lehmer married Clara Eunice Mitchell on 12 July 1900 at Decatur, Illinois, and after they had travelled to Berkeley, Lehmer wrote to his sister-in-law Daisy Lehmer on 2 September:
Derrick and Clara had two sons and three daughters Eunice (b. 1903), Helen (b. 1904), Derrick Henry (b. 1905), Stephen (b. 1907), and Alice (b. 1911). Derrick Henry Lehmer became a famous mathematician and also has a biography in this archive. Lehmer was promoted to professor at Berkeley in 1918 and continued to teach there until he retired on 27 July 1937. Lehmer published Factors in 1909, and List of prime numbers from 1 to 10006721 in 1914. The 1909 publication, whose full title is Factor Tables for the first ten millions containing the smallest factor of every number not divisible by 2, 3, 5, or 7 between the limits 0 and 10017000, was published by the Carnegie Institute of Washington. In it Lehmer gives a little of the history of tables of primes:
He goes on to say that Schooten published a list of primes to 10,000 (1657), Chernac published the first table to 1,020,000 (1811), Burckhardt published a table for the second million (1814), and Crelle completed the third, fourth, and fifth millions but the tables were discovered to be too inaccurate to publish. In 1917 Lehmer published An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry. He writes in the Preface:
One of the real gems in the book is the final chapter on the history of the subject. Lehmer writes about his attitude towards the history in the Preface:
During the 1920s Lehmer worked on factor stencils which gave a method of factorising a number using cards with holes punched in them. The method was described by his son as follows:
Lehmer published Factor Stencils in 1929. He had worked with his son in producing the stencils. They worked with residues R < 240 and covered 5000 primes which includes all primes up to 48611. This enabled integers up to 486112 = 2363029321 to be factored. Following on from the idea of factor stencils, Lehmer came up with another mechanical device to factor numbers. The reference gives details of this device:
Outside mathematics Lehmer had several interests which are described in the obituary produced by Berkeley:
Let us give a few more details of Lehmer's literary and musical achievements which are referred to in the above quote. He wrote a play The Crystal Gazers in 1936 which was never published. This play concerns spirit conjuring and alchemy, and recounts the story of how Edward Kelly convinced the mathematician John Dee that he could contact the spirit world. Lehmer wrote two operas: The Necklace of the Sun : A Mayan Drama had its premiere at the Scottish Rite Auditorium, Oakland, on 28 February 1935. It was also performed in San Francisco. A second opera The Harvest, which had a Red Indian theme, had been performed at the Little Theatre, Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco on 14 and 17 October 1933. He also published many collections of songs which he composed including Seven Indian Songs from the Yosemite Valley (1924), Down the stream and other Indian songs (1927), Indian camp-fire songs (1930), Indian songs from the Northland (1931), Fingers of the sun and other Indian songs from the Sierra slopes (1931), Songs from the Mesas (1932), Songs from the Tundras (1932), The Ballad of San Francisco Bay (1937), and Five Little songs (1937). He also wrote Fightery Dick and other poems. Lehmer received many honours for his mathematical work in number theory. He was awarded an honorary D.Sc. from the University of Nebraska in 1932. He was a member of many learned societies, including the American Mathematical Society ; the Mathematical Association of America ; Circolo Matematico di Palermo ; the American Anthropological Association; the Poetry Society of America; the Poetry Society of London; the California Writers' Club; the Bookfellows; the Nebraska Writers Guild; the League of Western Writers; and the American Society for Comparative Musicology. He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and he served as vice-president and trustee of the Mathematical Association of America . Lehmer died at his home, 2736 Regent Street, Berkeley, after an extended illness.
Source:School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland |