Albert Cyril Offord on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
Albert Cyril Offord FRS
Royal Society basic cv
Royal Society citation
Royal Society: photograph
* 1906 births 2000 deaths 20th-century British mathematicians People educated at Hackney Downs School Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge Academics of Birkbeck, University of London Academics of the London School of Economics {{UK-mathematician-stub
Albert Cyril Offord FRS FRSE
Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...
(9 June 1906 – 4 June 2000) was a British mathematician. He was the first professor of mathematics at the London School of Economics.
Life
He was born in London on 9 June 1906 the eldest child of Albert Edwin Offord, a master printer, and his wife Hester Louise, a former opera singer. The family werePlymouth Brethren
The Plymouth Brethren or Assemblies of Brethren are a low church and non-conformist Christian movement whose history can be traced back to Dublin, Ireland, in the mid to late 1820s, where they originated from Anglicanism. The group emphasizes ...
. He was educated at Hackney Downs
Hackney Downs is a park and an area of historically common land in the Lower Clapton area of the London Borough of Hackney. The name is sometimes also used to apply to the neighbourhood around the park.
Hackney Downs Park
The Downs open space ...
Grammar School. He then studied Mathematics at University College, London. He then went to St John's College, Cambridge
St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corpo ...
as a postgraduate, working with Prof John Edensor Littlewood.
He received two Ph.D.s in mathematics: the first from the University of London (under Bosanquet) in 1932, the second from Cambridge (under Hardy
Hardy may refer to:
People
* Hardy (surname)
* Hardy (given name)
* Hardy (singer), American singer-songwriter Places Antarctica
* Mount Hardy, Enderby Land
* Hardy Cove, Greenwich Island
* Hardy Rocks, Biscoe Islands
Australia
* Hardy, Sout ...
) in 1936.
In 1940 he left Cambridge to lecture at University College, Bangor. In 1942 he moved to King's College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is als ...
(later being named the University of Newcastle). He was created Professor of Mathematics in 1945.
In 1946 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...
. His proposers were Sir Edmund Whittaker
Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker (24 October 1873 – 24 March 1956) was a British mathematician, physicist, and historian of science. Whittaker was a leading mathematical scholar of the early 20th-century who contributed widely to applied mathema ...
, John William Heslop-Harrison
Prof John William Heslop Harrison, FRS FRSE (1881–1967), was Professor of Botany at King's College, Durham University (now Newcastle University). He enjoyed a brilliant career, specialising in the genetics of moths, but is now best remembere ...
, Alexander Aitken
Alexander Craig "Alec" Aitken (1 April 1895 – 3 November 1967) was one of New Zealand's most eminent mathematicians. In a 1935 paper he introduced the concept of generalized least squares, along with now standard vector/matrix notation fo ...
and Alfred Dennis Hobson
Alfred may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
*'' Alfred J. Kwak'', Dutch-German-Japanese anime television series
* ''Alfred'' (Arne opera), a 1740 masque by Thomas Arne
* ''Alfred'' (Dvořák), an 1870 opera by Antonín Dvořák
*"Alfred (Interl ...
. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1952.
In 1948 he left Newcastle to become Professor of Mathematics at Birkbeck College
Birkbeck, University of London (formally Birkbeck College, University of London), is a public university, public research university, located in Bloomsbury, London, England, and a constituent college, member institution of the federal Universit ...
in London replacing Prof Dienes. He left in 1966 to take up a new chair at London School of Economics. He retired in 1973 then becoming a senior research fellow at Imperial College, London.
He died in Oxford on 4 June 2000.
Family
In 1945 he married Margaret Yvonne Pickard (generally known as Rita), an English teacher. They had one daughter, Margaret Offord (born 1949).See also
*Littlewood–Offord problem In mathematical field of combinatorial geometry, the Littlewood–Offord problem is the problem of determining the number of subsums of a set of vectors that fall in a given convex set. More formally, if ''V'' is a vector space of dimension ''d'', ...
References
External links
Royal Society basic cv
Royal Society citation
Royal Society: photograph
* 1906 births 2000 deaths 20th-century British mathematicians People educated at Hackney Downs School Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge Academics of Birkbeck, University of London Academics of the London School of Economics {{UK-mathematician-stub