George Birch Jerrard was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

.

He studied at Trinity College, Dublin

Trinity College, Dublin

Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...

 from 1821 to 1827. His main work was on the theory of equations

Theory of equations

In mathematics, the theory of equations comprises a major part of traditional algebra. Topics include polynomials, algebraic equations, separation of roots including Sturm's theorem, approximation of roots, and the application of matrices and determinants to the solving of equations.From the point...

, where he was reluctant to accept the validity of the work of Niels Henrik Abel

Niels Henrik Abel

Niels Henrik Abel was a Norwegian mathematician who proved the impossibility of solving the quintic equation in radicals.-Early life:...

 on the insolubility of the quintic equation

Quintic equation

In mathematics, a quintic function is a function of the formg=ax^5+bx^4+cx^3+dx^2+ex+f,\,where a, b, c, d, e and f are members of a field, typically the rational numbers, the real numbers or the complex numbers, and a is nonzero...

 by radical

Nth root

In mathematics, the nth root of a number x is a number r which, when raised to the power of n, equals xr^n = x,where n is the degree of the root...

s. He found a way of using Tschirnhaus transformation

Tschirnhaus transformation

In mathematics, a Tschirnhaus transformation, also known as Tschirnhausen transformation, is a type of mapping on polynomials developed by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus in 1683. It may be defined conveniently by means of field theory, as the transformation on minimal polynomials implied by a...

s to eliminate three of the terms in an equation, which generalised work of Erland Bring

Erland Samuel Bring

Erland Samuel Bring was a Swedish mathematician.Bring studied at Lund University between 1750 and 1757. In 1762 he obtained a position of a reader in history and was promoted to professor in 1779...

 (1736–1798), and is now called Bring–Jerrard normal form.

Works

• An essay on the resolution of equations, part 1, London 1858, (online).