DEPARTMENT of   MATHEMATICS Famous Manchester Mathematicians

The University of Manchester was founded as Owens College in 1851 and has always been one of the leading research universities in the UK. Over the last 150 years many famous mathematicians and scientists have worked here. Examples include

• Osborne Reynolds is famous for his work in fluid mechanics. In 1886 he formulated a theory of lubrication and three years later he developed the standard mathematical framework used in the study of turbulence. The 'Reynolds number' used in modelling fluid flow is named after him.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein who is best known for his work in philosophy undertook aeronautical research in Manchester. Needing to understand more mathematics for his research he began a study which soon involved him in the foundations of mathematics.
• Louis Mordell a pure mathematician who made important contributions in number theory.
• Alan Turing is probably best known for his work in artificial intelligence. Turing was the key person in the famous breaking of the Enigma codes during the war.
• Sydney Goldstein was one of the most influential theoretical fluid mechanicians in this century. He is best known for his work in boundary layer theory where the `Goldstein singularity' is named after him.
• Lewis Richardson was a scientist who was the first to apply mathematics, in particular the method of finite differences, to predicting the weather. He made contributions to calculus and to the theory of diffusion, in particular eddy-diffusion in the atmosphere. The 'Richardson number', a fundamental quantity involving gradients of temperature and wind velocity is named after him.
• Niels Bohr, the famous theoretical physicist, held a lectureship in Manchester.
• Sir Horace Lamb was one of the six professors appointed when Manchester University received its Royal Charter (his chair was in Mathematics, and Osborne Reynolds was given the Chair in Engineering). He made many important contributions to applied mathematics, including the areas of acoustics and fluid dynamics. His book `Hydrodynamics' (first published in 1895) was for many years the standard text on the subject and is still essential reading for serious researchers in fluid mechanics. It could be said that Lamb's main field of research was solid mechanics, and he made careful studies of the vibrations of spherical bodies which aided understanding in seismology. Research on waves in layered media led to the discovery of `Lamb Waves'.
• Sir James Lighthill was one of the most influential applied mathematicians of this century. He made important contributions to the modern developments in theoretical aerodynamics and aeroacoustics and was one of the founding fathers of the field of biofluiddynamics.
• Bernhard Neumann spent more than a decade in Manchester. He is one of the leading figures in group theory and has influenced the direction of the subject in numerous ways.
• Max Newman made many important contributions to combinatorial topology, Boolean algebras and mathematical logic. He directed the famous Colossus code-breaking operation in the war.
• John Littlewood is famous for his work on the theory of series, the Riemann zeta function, inequalities and the theory of functions. He held a lectureship at the University of Manchester from 1907 to 1910.
• Paul Erdös was one of the century's greatest mathematicians, who posed and solved thorny problems in number theory and other areas and founded the field of discrete mathematics, which is the foundation of computer science. He was also one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, with more than 1,500 papers to his name. In his early career he held a post-doctoral fellowship at this university.
• Harold Davenport is another distinguished number theorist who worked in Manchester as a contemporary of Paul Erdös and Louis Mordell.
• Kurt Mahler spent several periods of his academic life at Manchester. Major themes of his work were p-adic numbers, p-adic diophantine approximation, geometry of numbers (a term coined by Minkowski to describe the mathematics of packings and coverings) and measure on polynomials.
• Frank Adams was a leading figure in algebraic topology and homotopy theory. He developed methods which led to important advances in calculating the homotopy groups of spheres (a problem which is still unsolved), including the invention of the 'Adams operations' which are now finding application in other areas of pure mathematics.
• Brian Hartley is best known for his work in group theory. His book Rings, modules and linear algebra (written with T O Hawkes) is a widely used undergraduate text.
[Acknowledgement: This list was compiled using the excellent `The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive'].

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Page last modified:  8 April 2003