Prof Edward Lindsay Ince
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 ...
(30 November 1891 – 16 March 1941) was a British mathematician who worked on differential equations, especially those with periodic coefficients such as the
Mathieu equation and the
Lamé equation
Lamé may refer to:
*Lamé (fabric), a clothing fabric with metallic strands
*Lamé (fencing), a jacket used for detecting hits
* Lamé (crater) on the Moon
* Ngeté-Herdé language, also known as Lamé, spoken in Chad
*Peve language, also known ...
. He introduced the
Ince equation, a generalization of the
Mathieu equation.
Life
He was born in
Amblecote
Amblecote is an urban village and one of the most affluent areas in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley in the West Midlands, England. It lies immediately north of the historic town of Stourbridge, extending about one and a half miles from it, an ...
in
Worcestershire on 30 November 1891, the only son of Caroline Clara Cutler and her husband Edward Ince, an
Inland Revenue officer. The family moved to
Criccieth near
Portmadoc in Wales soon after he was born. His family moved to
Perth in Scotland around 1901, living at 6 Queens Avenue in the Craigie district, to the south-west of the city. He attended
Perth Academy
Perth Academy is a state comprehensive secondary school in Perth, Scotland. It was founded in 1696. The institution is a non-denominational one. The school occupies ground on the side of a hill in the Viewlands area of Perth, and is within the Pe ...
.
He studied mathematics at the
University of Edinburgh from 1909, graduating in 1913. Failing the medical for
World War I service, he won a scholarship and went to the
University of Cambridge where he graduated with an MA, and won the
Smith's Prize
The Smith's Prize was the name of each of two prizes awarded annually to two research students in mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1769. Following the reorganization in 1998, they are now awarded under the n ...
in 1918. He then began lecturing in mathematics at the
University of Leeds In 1920 he moved to the
University of Liverpool.
He was elected to 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 ...
in 1923. His proposers were
Sir 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 ...
,
David Gibb,
Arthur Crichton Mitchell and
Ralph Allan Sampson. The Society awarded him the
Makdougall Brisbane Prize for 1938–1940 for his work on periodic Lamé functions but he died before he received the award.
In 1926 he made a dramatic move, and accepted a professorship at the
Egyptian University in
Cairo. With a young family, and health problems arising from the
extreme heat, he returned to Britain in 1931 to take a post at the
University of Edinburgh for one year then spent two years at
Imperial College, London before returning to Edinburgh permanently in 1935.
He died in
Edinburgh on 16 March 1941.
Family
In 1923 he married Phyllis Fry. They had two daughters, Monica and Elizabeth. Monica Hughes(OC) went on to become a renowned author of children's and young adult books.
Publications
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References
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ince, Edward Lindsay
English mathematicians
Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
1891 births
1941 deaths
People educated at Perth Academy