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James Page was born in Cobham, Albemarle County, Virginia on 4 March 1864. His father, Thomas Walker Page, and his mother, Nancy Watson Morris, were both members of the "First Families of Virginia." Page's ancestor, Colonel John Page, for example, came to Virginia in 1650 and subsequently served as a member of His Majesty's Council in the colony. After home-schooling from his father, James earned his Master's degree at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland in 1885. By 1887, he had traveled to the University of Leipzig and had completed a doctoral dissertation on the theory of transformation groups in four-space under the direction of the noted Norwegian mathematician, Sophus Lie.
At this point in the history of American mathematics, it was usual for students desirous of advanced training in mathematics to travel abroad since the United States could offer no comparable training following Sylvester's departure from The Johns Hopkins University in 1883. What was much less usual, however, was the fact that Page was able to complete his Leipzig dissertation in only two years. In his written assessment of Page's thesis, Lie stated categorically that the "work deals with and resolves an important and rather difficult problem in the theory of continuous transformation groups," a theory that Lie was still in the process of developing [2, 236]. While he also acknowledged that Page "was largely shown a way that offered good prospects for success," Lie felt that "the task of carrying the entire investigation through required not only considerable energy but also a significant amount of finesse in dealing with the computational techniques" and that "[t]he work must therefore be regarded as a true scientific accomplishment" [2, 236]. Lie was not known for showering faint praise. He thus clearly viewed Page's work as a valuable, original research contribution. Page published his research as "On the Primitive Groups of Transformations in Space of Four Dimensions" in the American Journal of Mathematics in 1888. Page returned to Virginia, doctorate in hand, and held the headmastership of the Keswick School, a local private school, from 1888 to 1895. He had already begun his association with the University of Virginia by 1893, however, reporting in the Bulletin of the New York Mathematical Society that he was President of its Mathematical Club [1]. The year 1895-1896 found Page back in Europe--in Leipzig and Paris--working on the final touches of what would be his 1897 book, Ordinary Differential Equations: An Elementary Text Book with an Introduction to Lie's Theory of the Group of One Parameter. This book was one of the first texts in English aimed at providing an entrée into Lie's notoriously complicated theory. Page returned to the United States early in 1896 and lectured on his work as a Fellow by Courtesy, that is, what would today be termed a "visitor," at The Johns Hopkins University. Also in 1896, he became an associate editor of the Annals of Mathematics when its founder-editor, the University of Virginia astronomer, Ormond Stone, relinquished the editorship. At this time, Page was also appointed Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at Virgina. By the time the Annals moved to Harvard in 1899 and Page stepped down as associate editor, he had already served one year as an Associate Professor in the Virginia department, a promotion that had no doubt resulted from the publication of his book manuscript. On 26 July 1900, Page married Elinore Mildred McGlone; their son, James Morris Page, Jr., was born on 18 July 1901. Also in 1901, Page became Professor of Mathematics, the post he held until his retirement in 1934. During his tenure at the University, Page became very active both in University governance and in general educational issues. He served as Dean of the Faculty from 1900 to 1902, as Chair of the Faculty from 1903 to 1904, and as a member of the State Board of Education of Virginia from 1910 to 1927. Page died in 1936. A dormitory in the McCormick Road complex is named in his honor. Selected References
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