Percy John Heawood (8 September 1861
– 24 January 1955) was a British
mathematician, who concentrated on
graph colouring
In graph theory, graph coloring is a special case of graph labeling; it is an assignment of labels traditionally called "colors" to elements of a graph subject to certain constraints. In its simplest form, it is a way of coloring the vertice ...
.
Life
He was the son of the Rev. John Richard Heawood of
Newport, Shropshire, and his wife Emily Heath, daughter of the Rev. Joseph Heath of
Wigmore, Herefordshire; and a first cousin of
Oliver Lodge, whose mother Grace was also a daughter of Joseph Heath.
He was educated at
Queen Elizabeth's School,
Ipswich, and matriculated at
Exeter College, Oxford in 1880, graduating B.A. in 1883 and M.A. in 1887.
Heawood spent his academic career at
Durham University
, mottoeng = Her foundations are upon the holy hills (Psalm 87:1)
, established = (university status)
, type = Public
, academic_staff = 1,830 (2020)
, administrative_staff = 2,640 (2018/19)
, chancellor = Sir Thomas Allen
, vice_chan ...
, where he was appointed Lecturer in 1885. He was, successively, Censor of
St Cuthbert's Society between 1897 and 1901 succeeding
Frank Byron Jevons
Frank Byron Jevons (1858–1936) was a polymath, academic and administrator of Durham University.
Early life
He was educated at Nottingham High School and Wadham College, Oxford and appointed a lecturer in Classics at Durham in 1882.
Career
H ...
in the role, Senior Proctor of the university from 1901, Professor in 1910 and
Vice-Chancellor between 1926 and 1928. He was awarded an
OBE
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
, as Honorary Secretary of the Preservation Fund, for his part in raising £120,000 to prevent
Durham Castle from collapsing into the
River Wear
The River Wear (, ) in North East England rises in the Pennines and flows eastwards, mostly through County Durham to the North Sea in the City of Sunderland. At long, it is one of the region's longest rivers, wends in a steep valley through th ...
.
Heawood was fond of country pursuits, and one of his interests was
Hebrew.
His nickname was "Pussy".
Durham University awards an annual Heawood Prize to a student graduating in Mathematics whose performance is outstanding in the final year.
Works
Heawood devoted himself to the
four colour theorem and related questions. In 1890 he exposed a flaw in
Alfred Kempe's proof, that had been considered as valid for 11 years. The four colour theorem being an open question again, he established the weaker
five colour theorem. The four colour theorem itself was finally established by a computer-based proof in 1976.
Heawood also studied colouring of maps on higher surfaces and established the
upper bound on the chromatic number of such a graph in terms of the connectivity (genus, or number of handles) of the surface. This upper bound was proved only in 1968 to be the actual maximum.
Writing in the Journal of the London Mathematical Society,
G. A. Dirac wrote:
Family
Heawood married in 1890 Christiana Tristram, daughter of
Henry Baker Tristram; they had a son and a daughter.
See also
*
Heawood conjecture
*
Heawood number
*
Heawood graph
*
Four color theorem
In mathematics, the four color theorem, or the four color map theorem, states that no more than four colors are required to color the regions of any map so that no two adjacent regions have the same color. ''Adjacent'' means that two regions sh ...
*
Five color theorem
References
External links
MacTutor biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heawood, Percy John
1861 births
1955 deaths
Newport, Shropshire
19th-century British mathematicians
20th-century British mathematicians
People from Newport, Shropshire
Combinatorialists
Academics of Durham University
Vice-Chancellors and Wardens of Durham University
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
Place of birth missing