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John Hilton Grace

British mathematician

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ10966036 ↗
Source-derived summary

John Hilton Grace FRS (21 May 1873 – 4 March 1958) was a British mathematician. The Grace–Walsh–Szegő theorem is named in part after him.

Early life

He was born in Halewood, near Liverpool, the eldest of the six children of farmer William Grace and Elizabeth Hilton. He was educated at the village school and the Liverpool Institute. From there in 1892 he went up to Peterhouse, Cambridge to study mathematics.

His nephew, his younger sister's son, was the animal geneticist, Alan Robertson FRS.

Career

He was made a Fellow of Peterhouse in 1897 and became a Lecturer of Mathematics at Peterhouse and Pembroke colleges. An example of his work was his 1902 paper on The Zeros of a Polynomial. In 1903 he collaborated with Alfred Young on their book Algebra of Invariants.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1908.

He spent 1916–1917 as visiting professor in Lahore and deputised for Professor MacDonald at Aberdeen University during the latter part of the war.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “John Hilton Grace” as british mathematician. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1873, 1958, 1892, 1897—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1873-05-21. The account is most persuasive where John, Hilton and Grace can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as british mathematician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10966036. VIAF identifies the subject as 49586237. The Library of Congress control number is n86864707. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1873, 1958, 1892 and 1897.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “John Hilton Grace”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow John Hilton Grace primary sources, John Hilton Grace archive and John research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “John Hilton Grace” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.