Patrick du Val (March 26, 1903 – January 22, 1987) was a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British 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 work on

algebraic geometry Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics, classically studying zeros of multivariate polynomials. Modern algebraic geometry is based on the use of abstract algebraic techniques, mainly from commutative algebra, for solving geometrical ...

differential geometry Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multili ...

, and

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...

. The concept of

Du Val singularity In algebraic geometry, a Du Val singularity, also called simple surface singularity, Kleinian singularity, or rational double point, is an isolated singularity of a complex surface which is modeled on a double branched cover of the plane, with mi ...

of an

algebraic surface In mathematics, an algebraic surface is an algebraic variety of dimension two. In the case of geometry over the field of complex numbers, an algebraic surface has complex dimension two (as a complex manifold, when it is non-singular) and so of di ...

is named after him.

Early life

Du Val was born in

Cheadle Hulme Cheadle Hulme () is a suburb in the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, Greater Manchester, England,. Historically in Cheshire, it is south-west of Stockport and south-east of Manchester. It lies in the Ladybrook Valley, on the Cheshire Plain ...

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county t ...

. He was the son of a

cabinet maker A cabinet is a case or cupboard with shelves and/or drawers for storing or displaying items. Some cabinets are stand alone while others are built in to a wall or are attached to it like a medicine cabinet. Cabinets are typically made of wood (s ...

, but his parents' marriage broke up. As a child, he suffered ill-health, in particular

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, and was educated mostly by his mother. He was awarded a first class honours degree from the

University of London External Programme The University of London Worldwide (previously called the University of London International Academy) is the central academic body that manages external study programmes within the collegiate university, federal University of London. All courses ...

in 1926, which he took by correspondence course. He was a talented linguist, for example teaching himself

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

so that he might read

Peer Gynt ''Peer Gynt'' (, ) is a five- act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen published in 1876. Written in Norwegian, it is one of the most widely performed Norwegian plays. Ibsen believed ''Per Gynt'', the Norwegian fairy tale on wh ...

. He also had a strong interest in history but his love of mathematics led him to pursue that as a career. His earliest publications show a leaning towards applied mathematics. His mother moved to a village near

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

and he became acquainted with Henry Baker,

Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry The Lowndean chair of Astronomy and Geometry is one of the two major Professorships in Astronomy (alongside the Plumian Professorship) and a major Professorship in Mathematics at Cambridge University. It was founded in 1749 by Thomas Lowndes, an ...

. Baker turned his interest towards

, and he entered

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 ...

in 1927.

Research in geometry

Du Val's early work before becoming a research student was on relativity, including a paper on the De Sitter model of the universe and

Grassmann Hermann Günther Grassmann (german: link=no, Graßmann, ; 15 April 1809 – 26 September 1877) was a German polymath known in his day as a linguistics, linguist and now also as a mathematician. He was also a physicist, general scholar, and publi ...

's tensor calculus. His doctorate was on algebraic geometry and in his thesis he generalised a result of Schoute. He worked on

algebraic surfaces In mathematics, an algebraic surface is an algebraic variety of dimension two. In the case of geometry over the field of complex numbers, an algebraic surface has complex dimension two (as a complex manifold, when it is non-singular) and so of di ...

and later in his career became interested in

elliptic functions In the mathematical field of complex analysis, elliptic functions are a special kind of meromorphic functions, that satisfy two periodicity conditions. They are named elliptic functions because they come from elliptic integrals. Originally those i ...

. He received his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

with a thesis entitled 'On Certain Configurations of Algebraic Geometry Having Groups of Self-Transformations Representable by Symmetry Groups of Certain Polygons' under Baker's supervision in 1930. While a research student he had many famous geometers including Hodge as fellow research students, and he formed a particular friendship with

Coxeter Harold Scott MacDonald "Donald" Coxeter, (9 February 1907 – 31 March 2003) was a British and later also Canadian geometer. He is regarded as one of the greatest geometers of the 20th century. Biography Coxeter was born in Kensington to ...

and Semple. He was elected a fellow of Trinity in 1930 for four years. During that time he travelled extensively, visiting

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and working with

Federigo Enriques Abramo Giulio Umberto Federigo Enriques (5 January 1871 – 14 June 1946) was an Italian mathematician, now known principally as the first to give a classification of algebraic surfaces in birational geometry, and other contributions in algebrai ...

, then in 1934

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, where he attended lectures by James W. Alexander, Luther P. Eisenhart,

Solomon Lefschetz Solomon Lefschetz (russian: Соломо́н Ле́фшец; 3 September 1884 – 5 October 1972) was an American mathematician who did fundamental work on algebraic topology, its applications to algebraic geometry, and the theory of non-linear o ...

Oswald Veblen Oswald Veblen (June 24, 1880 – August 10, 1960) was an American mathematician, geometer and topologist, whose work found application in atomic physics and the theory of relativity. He proved the Jordan curve theorem in 1905; while this was lon ...

Joseph Wedderburn Joseph Henry Maclagan Wedderburn FRSE FRS (2 February 1882 – 9 October 1948) was a Scottish mathematician, who taught at Princeton University for most of his career. A significant algebraist, he proved that a finite division algebra is a fie ...

, and

Hermann Weyl Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl, (; 9 November 1885 – 8 December 1955) was a German mathematician, theoretical physicist and philosopher. Although much of his working life was spent in Zürich, Switzerland, and then Princeton, New Jersey, he is assoc ...

. In 1936, Du Val took up an assistant lectureship in the Mathematics Department at

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

, where he stayed for five years. He was then funded by a

British Council The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh lan ...

scheme to go to

Istanbul University , image = Istanbul_University_logo.svg , image_size = 200px , latin_name = Universitas Istanbulensis , motto = tr, Tarihten Geleceğe Bilim Köprüsü , mottoeng = Science Bridge from Past to the Future , established = 1453 1846 1933 ...

as a professor of pure mathematics. There he learnt Turkish and even wrote a book on coordinate geometry in that language. After a spell in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

at the

University of Georgia , mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things." , establ ...

, he returned to the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

, first taking up a post in

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

, then at the

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

in 1954, where he remained until he retired in 1970. Together with Semple he led the London Geometry Seminar during the time he spent in London. Du Val had three children.

Later life

After retirement, Du Val returned to Istanbul. For three years he held the same post as before, and then as if reversing history, settled down to a retirement in Cambridge. He is remembered as an interesting character. For example, in Manchester during the war he was remembered as a cloaked figure striding the parapets, as he carried out his duties as a fire warden. He was also known for startling the travelling public by carrying around a large string bag filled with garishly coloured stellated icosahedra.

Work

* * * * 1938: (with

H. S. M. Coxeter Harold Scott MacDonald "Donald" Coxeter, (9 February 1907 – 31 March 2003) was a British and later also Canadian geometer. He is regarded as one of the greatest geometers of the 20th century. Biography Coxeter was born in Kensington t ...

, H.T. Flather, J.F. Petrie)

The Fifty-Nine Icosahedra ''The Fifty-Nine Icosahedra'' is a book written and illustrated by Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter, H. S. M. Coxeter, Patrick du Val, P. Du Val, H. T. Flather and J. F. Petrie. It enumerates certain stellations of the regular convex or Platonic re ...

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

studies, mathematical series 6: 1–26. * 1952: ''On surfaces whose canonical system is hyperelliptic'',

Canadian Journal of Mathematics The ''Canadian Journal of Mathematics'' (french: Journal canadien de mathématiques) is a bimonthly mathematics journal published by the Canadian Mathematical Society. It was established in 1949 by H. S. M. Coxeter and G. de B. Robinson. The cur ...

4: 204–221. * 1964: ''Homographies, quaternions and rotations'', Oxford Mathematical 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 ...

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. * 1973: ''Elliptic functions and elliptic curves'',

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 ...

Lecture Note Series, No. 9,

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References

* J.A. Tyrrell (1989) "Obituary: Patrick du Val",

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

21(1): 93-99.

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Du Val, Patrick 1903 births 1987 deaths 20th-century British mathematicians Algebraic geometers Differential geometers Academics of the Victoria University of Manchester Academics of University College London Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Alumni of University of London Worldwide People from Cheadle Hulme