scholarly journals Dame Mary (Lucy) Cartwright, D.B.E. 17 December 1900 – 3 April 1998

2000 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 19-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
W.K. Hayman

Mary Cartwright, with J.E. Littlewood, F.R.S., first observed the phenomena that developed into Chaos Theory. Thus she had a significant effect on the modern world. She was the only woman so far to be a president of the London Mathematical Society, one of the first to be a Fellow of The Royal Society and the first woman to serve on its Council.

2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
W. K. Hayman

Mary Cartwright with J. E. Littlewood FRS first observed the phenomena which developed into Chaos Theory. Thus she had a significant effect on the modern world. She was the only woman so far to be a president of the London Mathematical Society, one of the first to be a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the first woman to serve on its Council. She was born on 17 December 1900 and died on 3 April 1998.


1948 ◽  
Vol 32 (299) ◽  
pp. 49-51
Author(s):  
T. A. A. B. ◽  
M. H. A. Newman ◽  
A. V. Hill

The death of the greatest English mathematician of our time is no mere national loss, for Hardy was recognised throughout the mathematical world as a master of our science. Of his studies, Hardy himself said, in his Inaugural Lecture at Oxford: “What we do may be small, but it has a certain character of permanence”. Few of us would dare to call Hardy’s contribution to mathematics small, while none of us can have any doubt about the lasting nature of his work. For a full account of the new pathways he opened up, the new territories he explored, reference must be made to the notices being prepared for the Royal Society and the London Mathematical Society. In the Gazette, it is fitting that we should record with special emphasis the debt which teachers of mathematics in this country owe to Hardy for the vast improvements in the teaching of analysis during the past forty years, from vagueness to precision, from obscurity to clarity, along lines mapped out and laid down for us by him.


Dr. Glaisher died on December 7, 1928, at the age of eighty years. At the time of his death he was the senior of the actual Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, was the senior member of the London Mathematical Society, and was almost the senior in standing among the Fellows of the Royal Society and among the Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society. Throughout all his years he was devoted to astronomy, chiefly in its mathematical developments. In his prime he ranked as one of the recognised English pure mathematicians of his generation, pursuing mainly well-established subjects by methods that were uninfluenced by the current developments of analysis then effected in France and in Germany. Towards the end of his life he had attained high station as an authority on pottery, of which he had diligently amassed a famous collection. Glaisher was the elder son of James Glaisher, F. R. S., himself an astronomer, a mathematician specially occupied with the calculation of numerical tables, and a pioneer in meteorology, not without risk to his life. For the father, one of the founders of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain, was an aeronaut of note; with Coxwell, in 1862, he made the famous balloon ascent which reached the greatest height (about seven miles) ever recorded by survivors.


Thomas John I’Anson Bromwich, who died on August 24, 1929, was one of the most accomplished and most versatile among English mathematicians of the last fifty years. He was born in Wolverhampton on February 8, 1875, but spent his youth in Natal, and was educated in Durban. He came to Cambridge, as a Pensioner of St. John’s College, in October, 1892. A brilliant career as an undergraduate ended when he was Senior Wrangler in 1895, in an exceptionally strong year which included also E. T. Whittaker and J. H. Grace- He obtained a Fellowship in 1897, but left Cambridge in 1902 to be Professor of Mathematics in Galway, returning in 1907 when appointed a permanent lecturer at St. John’s. He was also a University Lecturer from 1909 to 1926. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1906 and a Doctor of Science in 1909. He was for many years a most enthusiastic and energetic member of the London Mathematical Society, of which he was Secretary from 1911 to 1919, and Vice-President in 1919 and 1920. He married in 1901, and leaves a widow and one son. Bromwich’s work covers so wide a field that it is hardly possible for any one person to deal with it competently. His later work in mathematical physics is discussed in Dr. Jeffrey’s notice in the ‘Journal of the London Mathematical Society,’ vol. 5, p. 220. Prof. H. W. Turnbull and Prof. A. E. H. Love have very kindly provided me with notes concerning Bromwich’s early work, in algebra and in applied mathematics respectively, and what I say about these subjects is very largley based on them.


Alfred George Greenhill, born November 29, 1847, elected F. R. S. in 1888, died February 10, 1927. After a distinguished career at Christ’s Hospital, and at St. John’s College, Cambridge, he was second wrangler in 1870, but bracketed with the Senior Wrangler, Richard Pendlebury, of his own college, in the Smith Prize Examination. In the same year he was elected Fellow of the College. Shortly afterwards he was appointed to the Royal Indian Engineer­ing College, Cooper’s Hill. In 1873, however, he was made Fellow and Lecturer at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. This he left in 1876 to become Professor of Mathematics to the Advanced Class of Artillery Officers at Woolwich. After more than thirty years’ government service he retired, and the rest of his life was spent, as a bachelor, in London, first in New Inn, and later in Staple Inn; in his later years, he was the recipient of a Civil List Pension. During his residence in London he was very active in mathematical and scientific circles; he became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1888, and received a Royal Medal from that Society in 1906; he was awarded the De Morgan Medal by the London Mathematical Society in 1902; he had served as President of this Society 1890-92. He was on the Councils of both societies, of the Royal Society, in 1896, 1897, and of the London Mathematical Society for many years. He also became a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences (Paris), and a foreign member of the Accademia dei Lincei (Rome). He was knighted in 1908, on his retirement from Woolwich. His original contributions to knowledge were mainly to Dynamics, to Hydrodynamics, and to Elasticity. Of the great value of these a highly appreciative account is given by an expert, in Prof. Love's Obituary Notice of Greenhill, “Journal of the London Math. Soc.,” vol. iii, pp. 29 and 30, 1928. Prof. Love writes as follows.


1955 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 33-36

Arthur Lee Dixon was born at Pickering, Yorkshire, on 27 November 1867, the second of three sons of the Rev. G. T. Dixon, Wesleyan minister of Northallerton. His elder brother, A. C. Dixon, was also a distinguished mathematician, and a Fellow of this Society (see Obituary Notices , 2, 165 (1936)). A. L. Dixon was educated at Kingswood School, Bath (1879-85) and Worcester College, Oxford (1885-9), where he was a mathematical scholar. He was a Fellow of Merton College for the thirty-odd years 1891-1922, at first a Prize Fellow and then a Tutorial Fellow. He became Savilian Professor of Pure Mathematics in 1922 and held this chair until his voluntary retirement in 1945. He was elected into the Royal Society in 1912, and was President of the London Mathematical Society in 1924-5. Dixon was married in Paris in 1902 to Catherine, eldest daughter of Léon Rieder. The climate of Oxford proved disastrous to Mrs Dixon’s health and she was compelled to spend much of her married life outside Oxford, in Pau and elsewhere. There was one daughter of the marriage, who became Mrs F. J. Baden Fuller; after his wife’s death in 1930 it was with his daughter and her husband, in Sandgate, Kent, that Dixon made his home (a very happy home), and it was here that he died on 20 February 1955 in his eighty-eighth year.


1944 ◽  
Vol 4 (13) ◽  
pp. 596-615

Dr Geoffrey Thomas Bennett, who was made Fellow of the Royal Society in 1914, and served on the Council 1936-1938, died at Cambridge, after an operation, on 11 October 1943. Born in London, 30 June 1868, he was at University College School, under H. W. Eve as Headmaster, for three years, till 1886, but at University College, of which the school was then an integral part, for the session 1886-1887. As a distinguished alumnus he was elected Fellow of University College in 1892. At University College School his mathematical master was Robert Tucker, well known for many years as the genial and keen Secretary (with Morgan Jenkins) of the London Mathematical Society, who edited Clifford’s papers and was the origin of ‘Tucker’s Circle’. Bennett obtained a scholarship at St John’s College, Cambridge, in December 1886, and came into residence October 1887. Another pupil of Tucker’s, Vaughan, came up to Trinity College at the same time. In 1890 Bennett was placed first of the men in the Mathematical Tripos, as senior wrangler, Miss Fawcett being placed above him; in 1891 he obtained, with her, a First Class in the Second Part of the examination, and the first Smith’s Prize in 1892. He was then made Fellow of St John’s College; but in 1893 he was appointed at Emmanuel College to be College Lecturer in Mathematics (and Junior Fellow at that college), with W. B. Allcock as his Emmanuel colleague. Previously Mr R. R. Webb, though resident in St John’s, had given lectures for the group of five colleges of which Emmanuel was part, and Bennett had been ‘coached’ by him through his undergraduate career.


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