Frank Lauren Hitchcock

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Frank Lauren Hitchcock
Frank Lauren Hitchcock (1875-1957).jpg
Frank Lauren Hitchcock (1875–1957)
Born March 6, 1875
New York, USA
Died May 31, 1957
Los Angeles, USA
Residence USA
Nationality American
Fields Chemistry and Mathematics
Institutions Massachusetts Institute of Technology
North Dakota State University
Alma mater Harvard University
Phillips Andover Academy
Doctoral students Gleason Kenrick
Claude Shannon
Known for Transportation problem

Frank Lauren Hitchcock (1875–1957) was an American mathematician and physicist known for his formulation of the transportation problem in 1941.

Academic life

Frank did his preparatory study at Phillips Andover Academy. He entered Harvard University and completed his bachelor's degree in 1896. Then he began teaching, first in Paris and at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. From 1904 to 1906 he taught chemistry at North Dakota State University, Fargo.

Hitchcock returned to Massachusetts and began to teach at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and study at the graduate level at Harvard. In 1910 he obtained a Ph.D. with a thesis entitled, Vector Functions of a Point. Hitchcock stayed at MIT until retirement, publishing his analysis of optimal distribution in 1941.

Personal life

Frank Hitchcock was descended from New England forebears. His mother was Susan Ida Porter (b. January 1, 1848, Middlebury, Vermont) and his father was Elisha Pike Hitchcock. His parents married on June 27, 1866. Frank was born March 6, 1875, in New York City.[1]

He had two sisters, Mary E. Hitchcock and Viola M. Hitchcock, and two brothers, George P. Hitchcock and Ernest Van Ness Hitchcock. Although Frank was born in New York City, he was raised in Pittsford, Vermont.

Frank married Margaret Johnson Blakely (d. May 22, 1925) in Paris, France on May 25, 1899. They had three children, Lauren Blakely (b. March 18, 1900), John Edward (b. January 28, 1906, d. July 26, 1909), and George Blakely, January 12, 1910. At the time of his death Frank had 11 grandchildren and 6 great-grandsons.

Works

References

  1. J. McKeen Cattell & Dean A. Brimhall (1921) American Men of Science, page 319, link from Biodiversity Heritage Library
  • Dr. Frank L. Hitchcock, Mathematician, Professor Emeritus at M.I.T., Dies at 82, The New York Times, June 1, 1957, p. 17.
  • Frank L. Hitchcock (1941) "The distribution of a product from several sources to numerous localities", MIT Journal of Mathematics and Physics 20:224–30 MR 0004469.

External links