Tony O'Farrell (born Anthony G. O'Farrell in 1947 in Dublin) is an Irish mathematician who is Professor Emeritus at

Maynooth University The National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUIM; ga, Ollscoil na hÉireann Mhá Nuad), commonly known as Maynooth University (MU), is a constituent university of the National University of Ireland in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland. It w ...

. He has been in the Mathematics and Statistics Department there since 1975.

Early life

He was born in Dublin and grew up there and in Tipperary.

Education and career

He attended

University College Dublin University College Dublin (commonly referred to as UCD) ( ga, Coláiste na hOllscoile, Baile Átha Cliath) is a public research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a collegiate university, member institution of the National University of Ireland ...

(UCD) earning a BSc in mathematical science (1967). After a year working for the

Irish Meteorological Service Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

, he returned to UCD for his MSc (1969). He then moved to the USA, to Brown University from which he earned a PhD in 1973, for a thesis on "Capacities in Uniform Approximation" done under Brian Cole. After two years at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...

(UCLA), during which he published extensively, in 1975 he returned to Ireland as Professor of Mathematics at

St. Patrick's College, Maynooth St Patrick's Pontifical University, Maynooth ( ga, Coláiste Naoimh Phádraig, Maigh Nuad), is the "National Seminary for Ireland" (a Roman Catholic college), and a pontifical university, located in the town of Maynooth, from Dublin, Ireland ...

(later

), outside Dublin. This appointment was notable for two reasons: he was only 28, and, while Maynooth had lay lecturers and senior lecturers, he was the first layman appointed to a chair at this traditionally pontifical institution. O'Farrell has long been active in the

Irish Mathematical Society The Irish Mathematical Society ( ga, Cumann Matamaitice na hÉireann) or IMS is the main professional organisation for mathematicians in Ireland. The society aims to further mathematics and mathematical research in Ireland. Its membership is i ...

, serving as president in 1983 and 1984, and as editor of the ''Bulletin of the IMS'' since 2011. In 1981 he was elected to the Royal Irish Academy. From 1992-1995, he also served as head of the Computer Science Department at Maynooth. In 2002, O'Farrell established Logic Press which publishes mathematics books at various levels in both English and Irish. These range from the Irish Mathematical Olympiad Manual to undergraduate and postgraduate level texts and research monographs. In 2012, he formally retired from Maynooth, though he remains very active in many arenas.

Hamilton Walk

In 1990 O’Farrell established the annual Hamilton Walk, which commemorates the 16 October 1843 discovery of quaternions by

William Rowan Hamilton Sir William Rowan Hamilton LL.D, DCL, MRIA, FRAS (3/4 August 1805 – 2 September 1865) was an Irish mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. He was the Andrews Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College Dublin, and Royal Astronomer of Ire ...

. It starts at Dunsink Observatory in

County Dublin "Action to match our speech" , image_map = Island_of_Ireland_location_map_Dublin.svg , map_alt = map showing County Dublin as a small area of darker green on the east coast within the lighter green background of ...

, just west of the city, and follows the Royal Canal east to Broom Bridge. Over the decades, this has grown in popularity and stature, attracting

Nobel laureate The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make ...

s and Fields Medallists. O'Farrell's younger colleague Fiacre Ó Cairbre took over the organisation of the walk at the end of the 1990s, but O'Farrell always gives a speech at Broom Bridge. In 2018, O’Farrell and Ó Cairbre received the 2018 Maths Week Ireland Award, for "outstanding work in raising public awareness of mathematics" resulting from the founding and nurturing the Hamilton Walk.

Selected papers

* 1973 "An isolated bounded point derivation", Proceedings AMS 39 (1973) 559-562. * 1974 "A generalized Walsh-Lebesgue theorem", Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh 73A(1974/75) 231-234. * 1977 "Hausdorff content and rational approximation in fractional Lipschitz norms", Transactions AMS 228 (1977) 187-206. * 1976 "Sobolev approximation by a sum of subalgebras on the circle" (with J.B. Garnett), Pacific J. Math. 65 (1976) 55-63. * 1983 "Approximation by a sum of two algebras. The lightning bolt principle" (with D. Marshall). Journal of Functional Analysis, 52 (1983) 353-368. * 1984 "Approximation by polynomials in two diffeomorphisms" (with K.J. Preskenis), Bulletin AMS, 10 (1984) 105-107 * 1986 "

C^\infty

maps may increase

C^\infty

dimension", Inventiones Math. 89 (1987) 663-668. MR 89d: 58022. A preprint appeared as IHES preprint M/86/47 (1986). * 1992 "The tangent stars of a set, and extensions of smooth functions" (with R.O. Watson), J. für die Reine und Angew. Math., 430 (1992) 109-137. Announced in: Bulletin IMS 26 (1991) 10-1. MR 93h:58015. * 1997 "An example on Sobolev space approximation", Bulletin L.M.S., 29 (1997) 470-4. * 1998 "Finitely-generated algebras of smooth functions in one dimension" (with G. Allan, G. Kakiko and R. Watson), J. Functional Analysis, 158 (1998) 458-74. * 2000 "Pervasive algebras of analytic functions" (with I. Netuka and A. Sanabria), J. Approx. Theory, 106 (2000) 262-75. * 2002 "De Paepe's disc has nontrivial polynomial hull" (with A. Sanabria), Bull. LMS, 34 (2002) 490-4.

Selected books

* 2015 ''Analysis Zero'', Logic Press * 2005 ''Introduction to Maple Programming'', Kilcock * 2015 ''Reversibility in Dynamics and Group Theory'', (with Ian Short), Cambridge University Press (LMS Lecture Note Series 416)

References

External links

*
personal webpage
{{DEFAULTSORT:OFarrell, Tony Academics of St Patrick's College, Maynooth Academics of Maynooth University Alumni of University College Dublin University of California, Los Angeles faculty Brown University alumni 20th-century Irish mathematicians 21st-century Irish mathematicians Members of the Royal Irish Academy Living people 1947 births People from Dublin (city)