Brilliant English mathematician who primarily worked in algebra. Even as a third year student at Cambridge, the examiner put him in a class by himself--above the first. He had an uncanny memory. He also was an avid novel reader and mountaineer. He had difficulty, however, obtaining a job after graduation, so became a lawyer for 14 years. During his free time, he published more than 200 mathematical papers. He initiated analytic geometry of n-dimensional spaces and was one of the first to study matrices in On the Theory of Linear Transformations (1845). He also developed the theory of invariants, and studied the geometry of plane curves. He showed, for instance, that two circles intersect in four points, two of them being imaginary. He unified metric and projective geometry.

Sylvester

Additional biographies: MacTutor (St. Andrews)