About the Oliver Club

In 1891 James Edward Oliver (1829–1895), then chairman of our department, founded the Mathematical Club of Cornell University as a forum for talks and discussions by faculty members and students interested in mathematics. After his death the meetings were discontinued, but in 1898 they reconvened as the Oliver Mathematical Club of Cornell University.

The Oliver Club is intended for a general mathematical audience, including graduate students. It meets on Thursdays afternoons. Tea and cookies are served in the Mathematics Department lounge (532 Malott Hall) before each talk.

William C. Waterhouse, Early History of the Oliver Club, November 1971 [includes original constitution of the Oliver Club]

Schedule of Talks

Upcoming talks will be posted on the Mathematics Department web site at www.math.cornell.edu/m/event-list-p/oliver

More About James Edward Oliver

An excerpt from Waterman Thomas Hewett, Cornell University: A History, University Publishing Society, New York, 1905, pp. 141–143.

See also:

Clark A. Elliott, Biographical Dictionary of American Science: The Seventeenth through the Nineteenth Centuries, Greenwood Press, 1979, p. 194.

G. W. Hill, "Memoir of James Edward Oliver 1829–1895"; in Biographical Memoirs, Vol. IV, National Academy of Sciences, 1902, pp. 57–74.

 

A painting of James Edward Oliver hangs in the Mathematics Library on the fourth floor of Malott Hall. The image of Oliver shown here is a digital photograph of that painting, taken by Catherine Stevens.