Derek William Robinson (25 June 1935 – 31 August 2021) was a British-Australian theoretical mathematician and physicist. He was a researcher at the Australian National University.

Early life

Derek W. Robinson was born in southern England. He attended grammar school followed by the University of Oxford where he earned a Bachelor of Arts with honours in mathematics in 1957 and a PhD in nuclear physics in 1960 with the dissertation, ''Multiple Coulomb Excitations in Deformed Nuclei''. His PhD advisor was

David M. Brink David Maurice Brink (20 July 1930, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia – 8 March 2021, Oxford, UK) was an Australian-British nuclear physicist. He is known for the Axel-Brink hypothesis. Education and career Brink matriculated in 1947 at the Univer ...

Research

His academic focus became the mathematics behind quantum mechanics, which led him to research facilities all over the world. From 1960 to 1962, he was at the

ETH Zurich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

, Switzerland. He then served as a research associate at the University of Illinois for two years, after which he was a research associate at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany from 1964 to 1965. He also spent a year as a professor at Aix-Marseille University, followed by two years as a research associate at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

in Geneva, Switzerland, followed by another stint as a professor at the Aix Marseille University between 1968 and 1977. He served as the president of the Department of Physics from 1973 to 1975 and the assistant director of the Centre de Physique at

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...

in Marseille from 1974 to 1978.

Australia

In 1978, he moved his family to Sydney, Australia, where he became a Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of New South Wales until 1982. From 1982 until his retirement in 2000, he was a Professor of Mathematics at the Centre for Mathematics and its Applications at the Australian National University. From 2000, he continued doing grant-funded research based at Australia National University until his death in 2021. He also served as Chairman of the Board for the Institute for Advanced Studies from 1988 to 1992. In 1980, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Papers and accomplishments

Robinson is best known for the discovery of Lieb-Robinson bounds, the theoretical upper limit for the speed of information propagation in a non-relativistic quantum system. He is also known for writing, with

Ola Bratteli Ola Bratteli (24 October 1946 – 8 February 2015) was a Norwegian mathematician. He was a son of Trygve Bratteli and Randi Bratteli (née Larssen). He received a PhD degree in 1974. He was appointed as professor at the University of Trondhei ...

a two-volume work titled, ''Operator Algebras and Quantum Statistical Mechanics''. He received the Thomas Ranken Lyle Medal by the Australian Academy of Science in 1981. In 2001, he received the

Centenary Medal The Centenary Medal is an award which was created by the Australian Government in 2001. It was established to commemorate the centenary of the Federation of Australia and to recognise "people who made a contribution to Australian society or go ...

. He was also a world-class cyclist, having won Time Trials Championship in the International Masters Games Melbourne in 2002 in the Men 65-69 category.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Robinson, Derek W. 1935 births 2021 deaths English emigrants to Australia English mathematicians Australian mathematicians Alumni of the University of Oxford Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science