Hill Center

USA / New Jersey / Society Hill / Frelinghuysen Road, 110
maps.rutgers.edu/building.aspx?159

Center for the Mathematical Sciences at Rutgers University

Named for George William Hill (1838-1904) who graduated from Rutgers in 1859, under the venerable professor Strong. As a senior, Hill received the prize given by Harvard's Mathematics Journal for the solution of a problem. Apparently he had absorbed Strong's interest in planetary motion, for he made that his life's work. He worked for the Nautical Almanac in Cambridge, Massachussets from 1861-1892, during which time he developed the theory of differential equations necessary to make tables for the Almanac, describing to 12 decimal places the orbits of Venus, Jupiter and Saturn (1872-4) and finally the Moon (1877). In 1874 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1887 he received the medal of the British Royal Astronomical Society. In his 1886 article in Acta Mathematica he developed the theory of the linear differential equation:

y'' = p(t) y (where p(t) is a periodic function of time t).
(today called Hill's Equation), in order to explain (to 8 and later 12 decimal places) the observations of the distance to the Moon as a function of time. After this work he returned to his childhood home in West Nyack, New York. He commuted to New York City during 1892-5 to teach at Columbia University, but gave that up after he was elected as the first president of the American Mathematical Society (1894-96). He returned to Columbia 1898-1900, and died in 1904. The Collected Works of George Hill, which may be found in the Mathematics Library, contains a 20-page biography by the famous mathematician Henri Poincare, extolling Hill's original and profound work on the orbit of the Moon. Today, George Hill is honored in several ways at Rutgers. Since 1979, Joel Lebowitz has been the George W. Hill Professor of Mathematics and Physics, a position funded by the state Board of Governors. In 1996, Hill was elected to the Rutgers Alumni Hall of Fame (as an astronomer, the plaque in Winants Hall making no mention of mathematics). And (could we forget?) the Hill Center on Busch Campus was named for him in 1972.

Seventh floor lounge great place to study.

www.math.rutgers.edu/docs/history.html#hill
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Coordinates:   40°31'18"N   74°27'44"W

Comments

  • This is a place of great cosmic significance to a man.
  • The guy above me used to wind up near this building while tripping on acid.
This article was last modified 16 years ago