Dudley Littlewood
Dudley Ernest Littlewood (born September 7, 1903 in London , † October 6, 1979 in Llandudno in Wales ) was an English mathematician who dealt with representation theory of groups.
Littlewood won a scholarship to Trinity College at Cambridge University , where he began his studies with John Edensor Littlewood (not related to him). He won several prizes as a student, was a Wrangler on the Tripos exams, and graduated in 1925. He was then a school teacher and from 1928 at University College in Swansea , where he stayed until 1947 and under the influence of AR Richardson turned to algebra, especially the invariant theory and the theory of group characters. He also studied the work of Ferdinand Georg Frobenius and Issai Schur . In 1934 he became a lecturer there. In 1947 he was briefly a lecturer in Cambridge and from 1948 professor at the University College of North Wales in Bangor (Wales) . In 1970 he retired.
With Richardson he introduced special symmetric functions ( functions, named after Issai Schur) and the Littlewood-Richardson rule for their multiplication in 1934 . Littlewood then became an expert on the theory of the characters of the symmetrical group . He also explored applications of the symmetric group representations in quantum mechanics.
He had been married since 1930 and had a son.
Fonts
- The theory of group characters and matrix representations of groups. 1940, 2nd edition Oxford 1950.
Web links
- Mathematics Genealogy Project
- John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Dudley Littlewood. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Littlewood, Dudley |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Littlewood, Dudley Ernest (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 7, 1903 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 6, 1979 |
| Place of death | Llandudno (Wales) |