Alexander Craig "Alec" Aitken (1 April 1895 – 3 November 1967) was one of

New Zealand's New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country b ...

most eminent mathematicians. In a 1935 paper he introduced the concept of

generalized least squares In statistics, generalized least squares (GLS) is a technique for estimating the unknown parameters in a linear regression model when there is a certain degree of correlation between the residuals in a regression model. In these cases, ordinar ...

, along with now standard vector/matrix notation for the

linear regression model In statistics, linear regression is a linear approach for modelling the relationship between a scalar response and one or more explanatory variables (also known as dependent and independent variables). The case of one explanatory variable is cal ...

. Another influential paper co-authored with his student Harold Silverstone established the lower bound on the variance of an

estimator In statistics, an estimator is a rule for calculating an estimate of a given quantity based on observed data: thus the rule (the estimator), the quantity of interest (the estimand) and its result (the estimate) are distinguished. For example, the ...

, now known as

Cramér–Rao bound In estimation theory and statistics, the Cramér–Rao bound (CRB) expresses a lower bound on the variance of unbiased estimators of a deterministic (fixed, though unknown) parameter, the variance of any such estimator is at least as high as the ...

. He was elected to the Royal Society of Literature for his

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

memoir, ''Gallipoli to the Somme''.

Life and work

Aitken was born on 1 April 1895 in

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...

, the eldest of the seven children of Elizabeth Towers and William Aitken. He was of Scottish descent, his grandfather having emigrated from

Lanarkshire Lanarkshire, also called the County of Lanark ( gd, Siorrachd Lannraig; sco, Lanrikshire), is a historic county, lieutenancy area and registration county in the central Lowlands of Scotland. Lanarkshire is the most populous county in Scotl ...

in 1868. His mother was from

Wolverhampton Wolverhampton () is a city, metropolitan borough and administrative centre in the West Midlands, England. The population size has increased by 5.7%, from around 249,500 in 2011 to 263,700 in 2021. People from the city are called "Wulfrunians ...

. He was educated at

Otago Boys' High School , motto_translation = "The ‘right’ learning builds a heart of oak" , type = State secondary, day and boarding , established = ; years ago , streetaddress= 2 Arthur Street , region = Dunedin , state = Otago , zipcod ...

in Dunedin (1908–13) where he was school

dux ''Dux'' (; plural: ''ducēs'') is Latin for "leader" (from the noun ''dux, ducis'', "leader, general") and later for duke and its variant forms (doge, duce, etc.). During the Roman Republic and for the first centuries of the Roman Empire, '' ...

and won the Thomas Baker Calculus Scholarship in his last year at school. He saw active service during

enlisting in April 1915 with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, and serving in Gallipoli from November 1915, in Egypt, and at the Western Front. He was seriously wounded at the Somme. He spent several months in hospital in

Chelsea Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to: Places Australia * Chelsea, Victoria Canada * Chelsea, Nova Scotia * Chelsea, Quebec United Kingdom * Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames ** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...

before being invalided out of the army and shipped home to New Zealand in March 1917. Resuming his studies Aitken graduated with an MA degree from the

University of Otago , image_name = University of Otago Registry Building2.jpg , image_size = , caption = University clock tower , motto = la, Sapere aude , mottoeng = Dare to be wise , established = 1869; 152 years ago , type = Public research collegiate ...

in 1920, then worked as a schoolmaster at Otago Boys' High School from 1920 to 1923. Aitken studied for a doctorate ( PhD) at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

, in Scotland, under

Edmund Taylor 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 ...

where his dissertation, "Smoothing of Data", was considered so impressive that he was awarded a

DSc DSC may refer to: Academia * Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) * District Selection Committee, an entrance exam in India * Doctor of Surgical Chiropody, superseded in the 1960s by Doctor of Podiatric Medicine Educational institutions * Dalton State Col ...

degree in 1925. Aitken's impact at the university had been so great that he had been elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 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 socie ...

(FRSE) the year before the award of his degree, upon the proposal of

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 ...

Sir Charles Galton Darwin Sir Charles Galton Darwin (19 December 1887 – 31 December 1962) was an English physicist who served as director of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) during the Second World War. He was a son of the mathematician George Howard Darwin a ...

, Edward Copson and David Gibb. Aitken was awarded the Makdougall-Brisbane Prize for 1930–32, and was active in the affairs of the RSE, serving as Councillor (1934–36), Secretary to Ordinary Meetings (1936–40), and vice-president (1948–51; 1956–59). He was also an active member of the

Edinburgh Mathematical Society The Edinburgh Mathematical Society is a mathematical society for academics in Scotland. History The Society was founded in 1883 by a group of Edinburgh school teachers and academics, on the initiative of Alexander Yule Fraser FRSE and Andrew Je ...

and a Fellow of the

Faculty of Actuaries The Faculty of Actuaries in Scotland was the professional body representing actuaries in Scotland. The Faculty of Actuaries was one of two actuarial bodies in the UK, the other was the Institute of Actuaries, which was a separate body in Englan ...

. Aitken spent his entire career at the University of Edinburgh, working as lecturer in Actuarial Mathematics & Statistics (1925–36), Reader in Statistics (1936–46), and finally Professor of Mathematics (1946–65). During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

he worked in

Hut 6 Hut 6 was a wartime section of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, Britain, tasked with the solution of German Army and Air Force Enigma machine cyphers. Hut 8, by contrast, attacked Naval Enigma. ...

Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years followin ...

decrypting

ENIGMA Enigma may refer to: *Riddle, someone or something that is mysterious or puzzling Biology *ENIGMA, a class of gene in the LIM domain Computing and technology * Enigma (company), a New York-based data-technology startup * Enigma machine, a family ...

code. Aitken was one of the best

mental calculator Human calculator is a term to describe a person with a prodigious ability in some area of mental calculation (such as adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing large numbers). The world's best mental calculators are invited every two ye ...

s known, and had a prodigious memory. He knew the first 1000 digits of

\pi

, the 96 recurring digits of 1/97, and memorised the ''

Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of th ...

'' in high school. However, his inability to forget the horrors he witnessed in

led to recurrent depression throughout his life. Aitken was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemat ...

(FRS) in 1936 and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand (Hon FRSNZ) in 1940, both for his work in statistics,

algebra Algebra () is one of the broad areas of mathematics. Roughly speaking, algebra is the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating these symbols in formulas; it is a unifying thread of almost all of mathematics. Elementary ...

and

numerical analysis Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms that use numerical approximation (as opposed to symbolic manipulations) for the problems of mathematical analysis (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). It is the study of numerical methods ...

. He was an accomplished writer, being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1964 in response to the publication of his war memoirs, ''Gallipoli to the Somme''. His book was the basis of an

oratorio An oratorio () is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. Like most operas, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an instrumental ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is ...

of the same name by the New Zealand composer Anthony Ritchie. He was also an excellent musician, being described by

Eric Fenby Eric William Fenby OBE (22 April 190618 February 1997) was an English composer, conductor, pianist, organist and teacher who is best known for being Frederick Delius's amanuensis from 1928 to 1934. He helped Delius realise a number of works t ...

as the most accomplished amateur musician he had ever known, and was a champion athlete in his younger days.

Awards and honours

The

New Zealand Mathematical Society The New Zealand Mathematical Society is a New Zealand based learned society of mathematicians. It is listed by the Royal Society of New Zealand as the affiliate organisation responsible for mathematics research, and by the International Mathematical ...

and London Mathematical Society Aitken Lectureship occurs every two years (in odd-numbered years) when a mathematician from New Zealand is invited by both Societies to give lectures at different universities around the UK over a period of several weeks. The holders of Aitken Lectureship have been * Geoff Whittle (2011) * Robert Mclachlan (2013) * Steven Galbraith (2015) * Hinke Osinga (2017) *

Bakhadyr Khoussainov Bakhadyr M. Khoussainov ( Cyrillic: Бахадыр Хусаинов) is a computer scientist and mathematician, who was born and educated in the Soviet Union, works in the fields of mathematical logic, computability theory, computable model theor ...

(2019) An annual "Aitken Prize" is awarded by the

for the best student talk at their colloquium. The prize was inaugurated in 1995 at the

's Aitken Centenary Conference, a joint mathematics and statistics conference held to remember Aitken 100 years after his birth.

Personal life

He married

Winifred Betts Mary Winifred Aitken (née Betts; 11 May 1894 – 29 April 1971) was a New Zealand botanist. She was the first female lecturer at the University of Otago. Biography Born in Nelson, New Zealand, Nelson on 11 May 1894, Betts was the daughter of ...

, a lecturer in biology and the first female lecturer appointed to the University of Otago, in 1920. They had a daughter and a son. Aitken died on 3 November 1967, in

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

. Aitken's daughter, Elizabeth Aitken Rose, is a lecturer in urban planning at the

University of Auckland , mottoeng = By natural ability and hard work , established = 1883; years ago , endowment = NZD $293 million (31 December 2021) , budget = NZD $1.281 billion (31 December 2021) , chancellor = Cecilia Tarrant , vice_chancellor = Dawn F ...

Life and work

Awards and honours

Personal life

References

Further reading