Dudley E. Littlewood
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Dudley Ernest Littlewood (7 September 1903, London – 6 October 1979,
Llandudno Llandudno (, ) is a seaside resort, town and community in Conwy County Borough, Wales, located on the Creuddyn peninsula, which protrudes into the Irish Sea. In the 2011 UK census, the community – which includes Gogarth, Penrhyn Bay, Craigsi ...
) was a British
mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...
known for his work in group representation theory. He read mathematics at
Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...
, where his tutor was John Edensor Littlewood (they were not related). He was a lecturer at
University College, Swansea Swansea University ( cy, Prifysgol Abertawe) is a public university, public research university located in Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom. It was chartered as University College of Swansea in 1920, as the fourth college of the University of Wales. ...
from 1928 to 1947, and in 1948 took up the chair of mathematics at
University College of North Wales, Bangor , former_names = University College of North Wales (1884–1996) University of Wales, Bangor (1996–2007) , image = File:Arms_of_Bangor_University.svg , image_size = 250px , caption = Arms ...
, retiring in 1970. He worked on invariant theory and group representation theory, especially of the symmetric group, often in collaboration with
Archibald Read Richardson Archibald Read Richardson FRS (21 August 1881 – 4 November 1954) was a British mathematician known for his work in algebra. Career Richardson collaborated with Dudley E. Littlewood on invariants and group representation theory. They intr ...
of Swansea. They introduced
the immanant of a matrix In mathematics, the immanant of a matrix was defined by Dudley E. Littlewood and Archibald Read Richardson as a generalisation of the concepts of determinant and permanent. Let \lambda=(\lambda_1,\lambda_2,\ldots) be a partition of an integer n ...
, studied Schur functions and developed the Littlewood–Richardson rule for their multiplication. Littlewood was also interested in the application of representation theory to
quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...
.


Selected publications

*''The theory of group characters and matrix representations of groups.'' 1940; 2nd edition Oxford 1950. *''The skeleton key of mathematics: a simple account of complex algebraic theories'', Hutchison & Company, London, 1949; 2nd edition Harper & Brothers, New York, 1960
2002 Dover pbk reprint2013 Dover ebook edition
*''A university algebra.'' (1950); 2nd edition 1961.


See also

*
Hall–Littlewood polynomials In mathematics, the Hall–Littlewood polynomials are symmetric functions depending on a parameter ''t'' and a partition λ. They are Schur functions when ''t'' is 0 and monomial symmetric functions when ''t'' is 1 and are special cases of ...
* Plethysm *
Restricted representation In group theory, restriction forms a representation of a subgroup using a known representation of the whole group. Restriction is a fundamental construction in representation theory of groups. Often the restricted representation is simpler to under ...


References


External links

* * 1903 births 1976 deaths 20th-century British mathematicians Group theorists Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge {{UK-mathematician-stub