Mathematicians

Arthur Cayley

Modern

Citation Formats

General Reference

Mathematics Atlas. "Arthur Cayley." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://mathematics.interactiveatlas.org/mathematicians/arthur-cayley.

APA Style

Mathematics Atlas. (n.d.). Arthur Cayley. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://mathematics.interactiveatlas.org/mathematicians/arthur-cayley

BibTeX

@misc{mathematicsatlas-arthur-cayley,
  author = {Mathematics Atlas},
  title = {Arthur Cayley},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://mathematics.interactiveatlas.org/mathematicians/arthur-cayley},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

An English mathematician who helped found the modern British school of pure mathematics and, in an 1854 paper, gave the first abstract, axiomatic definition of a group, effectively founding group theory as a subject independent of permutations or numbers.

Facts

Birth Date

1821-08-16 1

Birth Year

1821 1

Death Date

1895-01-26 1

Death Year

1895 1

Birthplace

Richmond, London, England 1

Death Place

Cambridge, England 1

Nationality / Culture

English 1

Defining Contribution

Gave the first abstract, axiomatic definition of a group in 1854 and stated that every group can be represented as a group of permutations, now known as Cayley's theorem. 1

Notable Work

On the Theory of Groups, as Depending on the Symbolic Equation theta^n = 1 (1854) 1

Cross-Tradition Connections