John Charles Fields, FRS, FRSC was a Canadian mathematician and the founder of the Fields Medal for outstanding achievement in mathematics. First awarded in 1936, the medal has been awarded since 1950 every four years at the International Congress of Mathematicians to two to four recipients under the age of 40. Born in Hamilton, Ontario to a leather shop owner, Fields graduated from Hamilton Collegiate Institute in 1880 and the University of Toronto in 1884 before leaving for the United States to study at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Fields received his Ph.D. in 1887. His thesis, entitled Symbolic Finite Solutions and Solutions by Definite Integrals of the Equation d?y/dx? = x?y, was published in the American Journal of Mathematics in 1886. Fields taught for two years at Johns Hopkins before joining the faculty of Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. 

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