Graham Higman FRS (19 January 1917 – 8 April 2008) was a prominent English mathematician known for his contributions to group theory.

Biography

Higman was born in Louth, Lincolnshire, and attended Sutton High School,

Plymouth Plymouth () is a port 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 the west and south-west. Plymouth ...

, 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 f ...

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

. 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 S ...

in 1974. He was the founder of the Journal of Algebra and its editor from 1964 to 1984. Higman had 51 D.Phil. students, including

Jonathan Lazare Alperin Jonathan Lazare Alperin (; born 1937) is an American mathematician specializing in the area of algebra known as group theory. He is notable for his work in group theory which has been cited over 500 times according to the Mathematical Reviews. Th ...

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 des ...

, Marston Conder,

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, Oxfo ...

, 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. 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 World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

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 obje ...

, working at the Meteorological Office in

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and Gibraltar. 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