Sir Edward Maitland Wright (13 February 1906, Farnley – 2 February 2005,

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spelling ...

) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

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 ...

, best known for co-authoring ''

An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers ''An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers'' is a classic textbook in the field of number theory, by G. H. Hardy and E. M. Wright. The book grew out of a series of lectures by Hardy and Wright and was first published in 1938. The third edition ...

'' with

G. H. Hardy Godfrey Harold Hardy (7 February 1877 – 1 December 1947) was an English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. In biology, he is known for the Hardy–Weinberg principle, a basic principle of pop ...

Career

He was born in Farnley, near Leeds, Yorkshire, where his father was a soap manufacturer. He moved to the south of England with his mother when his parents separated. After obtaining a first-class mathematics degree as a self-taught external student at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

, Wright studied at

Jesus College, Oxford Jesus College (in full: Jesus College in the University of Oxford of Queen Elizabeth's Foundation) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is in the centre of the city, on a site between Turl Street, Ship S ...

and Christ Church, Oxford. His research career lasted from 1931 until the early 1980s, firstly on a Research Fellowship at Christ Church, which included a year in Göttingen, Germany. He was then appointed a lecturer at Christ Church, teaching there until 1935 followed by his appointment as Professor of Mathematics at the

University of Aberdeen , mottoeng = The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom , established = , type = Public research universityAncient university , endowment = £58.4 million (2021) , budget ...

. He held that chair from 1936 to 1962, except for a break during the war (from 1943 to 1945) when he was seconded to the Air Ministry Intelligence at MI6 headquarters. He became Vice-Principal of the University in 1961 and Principal and Vice-Chancellor from 1962 until he stood down in 1976. He nevertheless continued to work as a Research Fellow at the University until 1983. A building there is named after him in recognition of his service to the university. Wright worked in many different subspecialties, including

number theory Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) said, "Mat ...

and

graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conn ...

, and published over a hundred papers. Most of his work focused on analytic number theory.

Honours and awards

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1937 and awarded their

Makdougall Brisbane Prize 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 ...

in 1952. He was elected to the London Mathematical Society in 1929 and awarded their

Senior Berwick Prize The Berwick Prize and Senior Berwick Prize are two prizes of the London Mathematical Society awarded in alternating years in memory of William Edward Hodgson Berwick, a previous Vice-President of the LMS. Berwick left some money to be given to the ...

in 1978. He was knighted in 1977 and awarded the Gold Medal of the Order of Polonia Restituta of Poland in 1978.

Private life

He died in Reading shortly before his 99th birthday. He had married Phyllis Harris of North Wales, with whom he had a son, the mathematician John D. M. Wright.

Publications

References

External links

Obituary
''Bull. London Math. Soc.''
Obituary
''

Times Online ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fo ...

''.
Obituary
''

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