Graham Higman FRS (19 January 1917 – 8 April 2008) was a prominent English

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 contributions to

group theory In abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as groups. The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as rings, fields, and vector spaces, can all be seen ...

Biography

Higman was born in

Louth, Lincolnshire Louth () is a market town and civil parish in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England.OS Explorer map 283:Louth and Mablethorpe: (1:25 000): Louth serves as an important town for a large rural area of eastern Lincolnshire. Visitor a ...

, and attended Sutton High School,

Plymouth Plymouth () is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in South West England. It is located on the south coast of Devon, approximately south-west of Exeter and south-west of London. It is bordered by Cornwall to ...

, winning a scholarship to

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...

. In 1939 he co-founded The Invariant Society, the student mathematics society, and earned his DPhil from the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

in 1941. His thesis, ''The units of group-rings'', was written under the direction of

J. H. C. Whitehead John Henry Constantine Whitehead FRS (11 November 1904 – 8 May 1960), known as Henry, was a British mathematician and was one of the founders of homotopy theory. He was born in Chennai (then known as Madras), in India, and died in Princeton, ...

. From 1960 to 1984 he was the Waynflete Professor of Pure Mathematics at

Magdalen College, Oxford Magdalen College (, ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 million as of 2019 and one of the ...

. Higman was awarded the Senior Berwick Prize in 1962 and the De Morgan Medal of the

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh Mathematical ...

in 1974. He was the founder of the

Journal of Algebra ''Journal of Algebra'' (ISSN 0021-8693) is an international mathematical research journal in algebra. An imprint of Academic Press, it is published by Elsevier. ''Journal of Algebra'' was founded by Graham Higman, who was its editor from 1964 to ...

and its editor from 1964 to 1984. Higman had 51 D.Phil. students, including Jonathan Lazare Alperin,

Rosemary A. Bailey Rosemary A. Bailey (born 1947) is a British statistician who works in the design of experiments and the analysis of variance and in related areas of combinatorial design, especially in association schemes. She has written books on the desig ...

Marston Conder Marston Donald Edward Conder (born 9 September 1955) is a New Zealand mathematician, a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Auckland University,

John Mackintosh Howie John Mackintosh Howie (23 May 1936 – 26 December 2011) was a Scottish mathematician and prominent semigroup theorist. Biography Howie was educated at Robert Gordon's College, Aberdeen, the University of Aberdeen and Balliol College, Oxfor ...

, and Peter M. Neumann. He was also a

local preacher A Methodist local preacher, also known as a licensed preacher, is a layperson who has been accredited by the Methodist Church to lead worship and preach on a frequent basis. With separation from the Church of England by the end of the 18th century ...

in the Oxford Circuit of the

Methodist Church Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

. During the

Second World War 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 opposi ...

he was a

conscientious objector A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to objec ...

, working at the

Meteorological Office The Meteorological Office, abbreviated as the Met Office, is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and is led by CEO Penelope ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label=Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is #Descriptions, variously described as ...

and

Gibraltar ) , anthem = " God Save the King" , song = "Gibraltar Anthem" , image_map = Gibraltar location in Europe.svg , map_alt = Location of Gibraltar in Europe , map_caption = United Kingdom shown in pale green , mapsize = , image_map2 = Gibr ...

. He died in Oxford.

Publications

* * * Graham Higman (1966) ''Odd characterisations of finite simple groups'', U. of Michigan Press * * * Graham Higman and Elizabeth Scott (1988), ''Existentially closed groups'', LMS Monographs,

Clarendon Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, Oxford

Notes

References

*
Death notice, Oxford University Gazette, 17 April 2008

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Higman, Graham 1917 births 2008 deaths 20th-century English mathematicians 21st-century English mathematicians Group theorists Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford Fellows of the Royal Society People from Louth, Lincolnshire English conscientious objectors British Methodists Waynflete Professors of Pure Mathematics Presidents of the London Mathematical Society

Biography

Publications

See also

Notes

References

External links