James McMahon (mathematician)

James McMahon (April 22, 1856 – June 1, 1922) was an Irish mathematician whose career was spent at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

The idea was to create the Phi Beta Kappa of the sciences, a concession that the literary and arts focused Phi Beta Kappa Society was perceived as being tied to an older collegiate focus antedating the rise of science and engineering in the university curriculum.

Five years later, the chairman of the Cornell Mathematics Department, Professor William Oliver, died.

In the history of applied mathematics, McMahon's most significant contribution came late in life and was published posthumously.

In 1902, McMahon had delivered an address to the Section on Mathematics and Astronomy, American Association for the Advancement of Science, then assembled at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, entitled “Some Recent Applications of the Function Theory to Physical Problems”.

Professor Karl Pearson proposed that a specialist in geometry work out the trigonometry of higher-dimensioned plane space for all the relations between multiple correlation and partial correlation coefficients when variates are properties of the angles, edges and perpendiculars of sphero-polyhedron multiple space.

A pure mathematician was needed to write, in effect, a treatise on “Spherical Polyhedrometry.”[9] McMahon took up Pearson's charge as he was entering emeritus status.

The Carnegie Institute had granted him a retirement annuity allowing him to step down as Chair of Cornell's Mathematics Department and spend his final years focused on new developments in the field.

The results were published the year after McMahon's death as the paper Hyperspherical Geometry; and its Application to Correlation Theory for N Variables.

While Chair of the Mathematics Department at Cornell University, Professor McMahon supplied the Democratic National Committee with three reasons to favor Wilson.

When he returned in 1921 he had a Carnegie pension which permitted him to focus on the framing of “Spherical Polyhedrometry”, a subject he pursued until his death later that year.