11-27-1875

Johns Hopkins University offered J. J. Sylvester $5000 a year plus moving expenses to assume the math professorship. He set three conditions under which he would accept: The sum be paid in gold, the university provide a residence, and that he be allowed to appropriate student fees. Only the first was acceptable to the university, but Sylvester agreed when the offer was increased to $6000 in gold. Shortly after arriving, he founded the American Journal of Mathematics. In 1883 he left to become Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford.

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James Joseph Sylvester