William Benjamin FITE (1869-1932) apparently was born on 23 Aug 1869 and died in 1932. He got his PhD in Cornell University in 1901. His Advisor was George Abram Miller (1863-1951) and the title of the dissertation was “On Metabelian Groups”. He was appointed Professor of Mathematics in Columbia University, New York, in 1911. He was the Treasurer of the American Mathematical Society during the period (1921-1929). Besides writing a book on Metabelian Groups, he wrote other books in College Algebra among others. He is the author of the paper: W.B. Fite. Concerning the zeros of solutions of certain differential equations. Trans. Amer. Math. Soc., 19 (1917), pp. 341–352. I am sure that if you search carefully with the right keywords in google you will get more details.