George Leo Watson

George Leo Watson (born December 13, 1909 in Whitby , † January 9, 1988 in London ) was a British mathematician who dealt with number theory.

Watson attended Trinity College at Cambridge University from 1927, where he studied with S. Pollard and AS Besicovitch . After graduation in 1930 he went to India as an administrative officer (District Commissioner in Nagpur ). There he studied number theory books by Leonard Dickson as a leisure activity and began to occupy himself with number theory. After India's independence, he returned to Great Britain in 1948 and taught at Acton Technical College in South London (later part of Brunel University). In 1951 he attracted attention for a new proof of the 7-cube theorem (Watson, A proof of the seven cubes theorem, Journal London Mathematical Society, Vol. 26, 1951, pp. 153-156), which is considerably simpler than that of Juri Linnik was from 1941. The theorem states that any sufficiently large natural number can be represented as the sum of seven non-negative cubes. Harold Davenport made sure that he became a lecturer at University College London . From 1961 he was there reader, from 1970 professor. In 1977 he retired.

In 1968 he received the Senior Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical Society (LMS) for three of his number theory work (Diophantine equations reducible to quadratics, Proc. LMS, Vol. 17, 1967, pp. 26-44, Non-homogeneous cubic equations, ibid ., Pp. 271-295, Asymmetric inequalities for indefinite quadratic forms, Proc. LMS Vol. 18, 1968, p. 95).

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