EM Wright
Sir Edward Maitland Wright , cited as EM Wright, (born February 13, 1906 in Farnley near Leeds , † February 2, 2005 in Reading ) was a British mathematician who dealt with number theory.
After his father's soap factory went bankrupt, he grew up with his mother, a music teacher. As an external student, he took the bachelor's examination in mathematics at the University of London , which he prepared for in self-study, while at the same time from the age of 16 he worked as a teacher, including French. From 1926 he studied with a won scholarship at Oxford University (Jesus College, Christ Church College as Junior Research Fellow 1930 to 1933), where he was a student of Godfrey Harold Hardy . After spending a year in Göttingen , he became a lecturer at King's College in London in 1932 and, after completing his doctorate, in 1933 at Christ College in Oxford. In 1935 he became a professor in Aberdeen. During World War II he was an intelligence officer in the Liaison Staff of the Royal Air Force and MI 6. From 1962 to 1976 he headed the University of Aberdeen as Principal and Vice Chancellor, after which he was a Research Fellow at the university until his retirement in 1983.
In 1938 he and Hardy published the well-known textbook Introduction to the theory of numbers .
In the new edition of their textbook from 1954 there is also the proof that for every number n there is a taxicab number . He also dealt with graph theory .
In 1977 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor and received the Senior Berwick Prize in 1978 . He was a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1937) and received multiple honorary doctorates.
His son John Wright was also a professor of mathematics (Reading).
Fonts
- Hardy, Wright: An introduction to the theory of numbers. Oxford University Press, 3rd edition, 1954, 5th edition 1979, reprinted 2008 with Roger Heath-Brown , Joseph Silverman .
Web links
- John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : EM Wright. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Knights and Dames at Leigh Rayment's Peerage
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wright, EM |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wright, Sir Edward Maitland (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 13, 1906 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Farnley near Leeds |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 2, 2005 |
| Place of death | Reading |