As we have learned in class, a useful matrix factorization is the QR-factorization. One way this factorization can be obtained is by using the Gram-Schmidt process on the matrix one wishes to factor. But have you ever wondered who this process was named after? To start, as the hyphen may suggest, the name of the above process is derived from two mathematicians, Jørgen Pedersen Gram and Erhard Schmidt. Although they were not the first to discover this process (that honor goes to the two older and famous mathematicians, Pierre-Simon Laplace and Augustin Louis Cauchy), they are given credit for publicizing it through their mathematical publications.

Jørgen Pedersen Gram was a Dannish mathematician born on June 27th, 1850. He obtained the equivalent of Ph.D in mathematics in 1873 and went on to work for an insurance company two years later. He would work for various insurance companies, including one that he himself founded, until 1910. He then served as Chairman of the Danish Insurance Council until 1916, when he was killed after being struck by a bicycle. Throughout his career in the field of insurance, he did research in the domains of probability and numerical analysis due to the fact that it assisted his everyday work. His work always involved both theory and practice, and thus has been noted to have made contributions to both pure and applied mathematics. He also worked for many years on a mathematic model for maximizing profit in the business of forestry, publishing several papers from 1879 to 1889. This model was widely used in the industry years later.

Erhad Schmidt was born on January 13th, 1876 in Germany and obtained his doctorate in 1905. He spent his professional life in academia, serving as professor at the University of Berlin for most of his life. He is credited for having founded the Institute of Applied Mathematics in Berlin, which brought the field of applied mathematics to the University of Berlin. He also held several university positions, including vice-chancellor for the years 1929-1930. Schmidt is well known for his work in Hilbert spaces, publishing several papers on the subject between 1907 and 1908. It was in one of these papers that he formalized the process that is now know as the Gram-Schmidt process. He was also interested in topology, providing a popular proof of the Jordan curve theorem.

References:
Biography of Jørgen Pedersen Gram : http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Gram.html
Biography of Erhard Schmidt : http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Schmidt.html