The Franklin family (his parents were born in Poland) migrated from
Hungary to
Philadelphia (United States) when Fabian Franklin was four years old and they afterwards moved to Washington, D.C. in 1861. He was educated at
Columbian College (now George Washington University) where he graduated
Ph.B. in 1869. Franklin worked the following seven years as surveyor and engineer for the
Baltimore City Council. When
Johns Hopkins University was founded in 1876, he had the opportunity to study mathematics, his true passion. He was awarded a doctorate in 1880 and he was the assistant of
James Joseph Sylvester till his return to England in 1883, applying the new calculational techniques to compute
binary forms. In 1882 he married
Christine Ladd-Franklin; the marriage was a marriage of equals, based on their shared concerns, both social and intellectual. They both studied with
Charles Sanders Peirce. During his short university period, some fifteen years, he published thirty papers, most of which appeared in the
American Journal of Mathematics. In 1895 he left the university to begin a new career as journalist and writer. First as editor of
Baltimore News (from 1895 to 1908) and afterward as associate editor of
New York Evening Post (from 1909 to 1919). He wrote some remarkable books on social, economic and political issues like
Cost of living (1915),
What Prohibition Has Done to America (1922) and
Plain Talks on Economics: Leading Principles and Their Application to the Issues of Today (1924) among others. He collaborated in the launching of
The Weekly Review (1919–1922), a journal devoted to the Consideration of Politics, of Social and Economic Tendencies, of History, Literature, and the Arts. He also wrote a biography of the founding president of Johns Hopkins University,
The Life of Daniel Coit Gilman (1910). == References ==