mathematics

Louis Weisner

Louis Weisner is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Louis Weisner rather than just read about it. In short: Louis Weisner (born 1899–1988) was an American-Canadian mathematician at the University of New Brunswick who introduced Weisner's method. He graduated in 1923 from Columbia University with a Ph.D. in mathematics.

Key takeaways

Louis Weisner belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Louis Weisner to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Louis Weisner from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Louis Weisner (born 1899–1988) was an American-Canadian mathematician at the University of New Brunswick who introduced Weisner's method. He graduated in 1923 from Columbia University with a Ph.D. in mathematics. His thesis Groups whose maximal cyclic subgroups are independent was supervised by Frank Nelson Cole. As a postdoc, Weisner was an instructor at the University of Rochester. At Hunter College he was appointed an instructor in 1927 and was successively promoted to assistant professor and associate professor. When he was an associate professor in 1954, the Board of Higher Education of the City of New York charged him with "neglect of duty" and "conduct unbecoming a member of the staff" because of his alleged involvement, beginning "in or about the year 1938", with the Communist Party. From 1955 to 1988 he was a professor of mathematics at the University of New Brunswick.

Selected publications

Articles Weisner, Louis (1924). "Group of a set of simultaneous algebraic equations". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 30 (7): 314–316. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1924-03886-5. MR 1560907. —— (1925). "Groups in which the normaliser of every element except identity is abelian". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 31 (8): 413–416. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1925-04079-3. MR 1561078. —— (1934). "Criteria for the irreducibility of polynomials". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 40 (12): 864–870. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1934-05989-5. MR 1562990. S2CID 123141886. —— (1935). "Abstract theory of inversion of finite series". Transactions of the American Mathematical Society. 38 (3): 474–484. doi:10.1090/S0002-9947-1935-1501822-0. MR 1501822. —— (1935). "Some properties of prime-power groups". Transactions of the American Mathematical Society. 38 (3): 485–492. doi:10.1090/S0002-9947-1935-1501823-2. MR 1501823. —— (1941). "Power series the roots of whose partial sums lie in a sector". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 47 (2): 160–163. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1941-07401-X. MR 0003799. —— (1942). "Roots of certain classes of polynomials". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 48 (4): 283–286. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1942-07658-0. MR 0006779. —— (1955). "Group-theoretic origin of certain generating functions" (PDF). Pacific J. Math. 5 (6): 1033–1039. doi:10.2140/pjm.1955.5.1033. —— (1959). "Generating Functions for Hermite Functions". Canadian Journal of Mathematics. 11: 141–147. doi:10.4153/CJM-1959-018-4. S2CID 124043241. —— (1959). "Generating Functions for Bessel Functions". Canadian Journal of Mathematics. 11: 148–155. doi:10.4153/CJM-1959-019-1. S2CID 124839860. —— (1963). "Special Orthogonal Latin Squares of Order 10". Canadian Mathematical Bulletin. 6 (1): 61–63. doi:10.4153/CMB-1963-009-0.

Books Weisner, L. (1947). Introduction to the Theory of Equations. Macmillan. (reprint of 1938 1st edition)

References

External links Louis Weisner memorial prize Louis Weisner at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Louis Weisner

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Louis Weisner claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Louis Weisner before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Louis Weisner ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Louis Weisner

In research: Louis Weisner appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Louis Weisner in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Louis Weisner is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1899 births, 1988 deaths, American emigrants to Canada, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Louis Weisner outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Louis Weisner in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Louis Weisner means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Louis Weisner out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Louis Weisner in simple terms?

Why does Louis Weisner matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Louis Weisner?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Louis Weisner.