Percy John Daniell (9 January 1889 – 25 May 1946) was a pure and

applied 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 One ...

Early life and education

Daniell was born in Valparaiso,

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

. His family returned to

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

in 1895. Daniell attended

King Edward's School, Birmingham King Edward's School (KES) is an independent school (UK), independent day school for boys in the British Public school (UK), public school tradition, located in Edgbaston, Birmingham. Founded by Edward VI of England, King Edward VI in 1552, it ...

and proceeded to

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

(where he was the last

Senior Wrangler The Senior Frog Wrangler is the top mathematics undergraduate at the University of Cambridge in England, a position which has been described as "the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain." Specifically, it is the person who a ...

in 1909). At this time Daniell was an applied mathematician/

theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experimen ...

Mathematical career

For a year he lectured at the

University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

and then he was appointed to the new

Rice Institute The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is an international agricultural research and training organization with its headquarters in Los Baños, Laguna, in the Philippines, and offices in seventeen countries. IRRI is known for its work ...

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

. The Rice Institute had him spend a year at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

studying with

Max Born Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a n ...

and

David Hilbert David Hilbert (; ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician, one of the most influential mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many a ...

. Daniell was at Rice from 1914 to 1923 when he returned to England to a chair at the

University of Sheffield , mottoeng = To discover the causes of things , established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions: – Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield , type = Pu ...

. In a series of papers published between 1918 and 1928, he developed and expanded a generalized theory of integration and differentiation, which is today known as the

Daniell integral In mathematics, the Daniell integral is a type of integration that generalizes the concept of more elementary versions such as the Riemann integral to which students are typically first introduced. One of the main difficulties with the traditional f ...

. In the setting of integration, he also worked on results that lead to the Daniell-Kolmogorov extension theorem in the theory of stochastic processes, independently of

Andrey Kolmogorov Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov ( rus, Андре́й Никола́евич Колмого́ров, p=ɐnˈdrʲej nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ kəlmɐˈɡorəf, a=Ru-Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov.ogg, 25 April 1903 – 20 October 1987) was a Sovi ...

. He was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1920 at Strasbourg.

Death

During

World War II 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 opposin ...

Daniell advised the British

Ministry of Supply The Ministry of Supply (MoS) was a department of the UK government formed in 1939 to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Minister of Supply. A separate ministry, however, was responsible for aircr ...

. The strain of work during the war took a heavy toll on his health. He died on 25 May 1946, after having collapsed at his home a few weeks earlier.

External links

Aldrich, J. (2007
"But you have to remember P.J.Daniell of Sheffield"
December 2007.

References

* Stewart, C.A. (1947), "P. J. Daniell", ''J. London Math. Soc.'' s1-22: 75–80. * Daniell, Percy John (1918), "A general form of integral", ''Annals of Mathematics'' 19: 279–94. * –––––– (1919a), "Integrals in an infinite number of dimensions", ''Annals of Mathematics'' 20: 281–88. * –––––– (1919b), "Functions of limited variation in an infinite number of dimensions", ''Annals of Mathematics'' 21: 30–38. * –––––– (1920), "Further properties of the general integral", ''Annals of Mathematics'' 21: 203–20. * –––––– (1921), "Integral products and probability", ''American Journal of Mathematics'' 43: 143–62. * –––––– (1946), "Discussion on the Symposium on Autocorrelation in Time Series", ''Supplement to the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society'' 8-1: 88–90. * Shilov, G. E., and Gurevich, B. L. (1978), ''Integral, Measure, and Derivative: A Unified Approach,'' Richard A. Silverman, trans., Dover Publications. 1889 births 1946 deaths University of Göttingen alumni Rice University faculty 20th-century British mathematicians Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Senior Wranglers People from Valparaíso People educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham British expatriates in Chile British expatriates in the United States {{UK-mathematician-stub