William Henry Young

Who was William Henry Young?

William Henry Young FRS was an English mathematician. Young was educated at City of London School and Peterhouse, Cambridge. He worked on measure theory, Fourier series, differential calculus amongst other fields, and made brilliant and long-lasting contributions to the study of functions of several complex variables. He was the husband of Grace Chisholm Young and father of Laurence Chisholm Young. Young's Theorem was named after him.

In 1913 he was the first to be appointed to the newly created chair of Hardinge Professorship of Pure Mathematics in Calcutta University which he held from 1913 to 1917. He also held the part-time Professorship of Philosophy and the History of Mathematics at the University of Liverpool from 1913 to 1919.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 2 May 1907. He served as the president of the London Mathematical Society from 1922 to 1924. In 1917 he was awarded the De Morgan Medal of London Mathematical Society and in 1928 the Sylvester Medal of the Royal Society.

He served as the president of the International Mathematical Union from 1929 to 1936.