John Hammersley

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John Hammersley, 1987

John Michael Hammersley (born March 21, 1920 in Helensburgh , Dunbartonshire , † May 2, 2004 in Oxford ) was a British mathematician who dealt with probability theory.

Life

Hammersley studied at the University of Cambridge ( Emmanuel College ), interrupted by his time at the Royal Artillery in World War II, where he was initially assigned to the flak and made a name for himself on his own initiative through various suggestions for improvement in ballistics . In 1946 he went back to university, where he graduated in 1948 (with top marks as a Wrangler in the Tripos exams ). He then worked in Oxford on the statistical design of experiments.

From 1955 to 1959 he was a senior scientist in the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell. He was then a researcher at the Institute of Economics and Statistics at Oxford University , and from 1961 to 1969 Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College , Oxford. Since 1969 he was Professorial Fellow (and Reader in Mathematical Statistics) at Oxford University. In 1987 he retired, but remained a part-time advisor to the Oxford Center for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (OCIAM) until 2000.

He is one of the founders of percolation theory and dealt with Monte Carlo simulation (he was considered an expert here), random paths (especially Self Avoiding Random Walks) and random growth processes (such as the growth of Eden clusters and dendritic growth of Crystals). He was of the opinion that random experiments that were easy to carry out belonged to the recommendable tools of every statistician. As a mathematician, he placed less emphasis on abstract theories than on solving concrete problems, and Geoffrey Grimmett even characterized him in his obituary as one of the outstanding problem solvers in mathematics of the 20th century. He publicly criticized the neglect of problem-solving skills in the new mathematics of the 1960s.

In 1976 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society . In 1966 he received the von Neumann Medal for Applied Mathematics from the University of Brussels, in 1980 he was Rouse Ball Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, in 1984 he received the gold medal from the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and in 1997 he received the Pólya Prize of the London Mathematical Society .

Hammersley also made contributions to the sofa problem .

Geoffrey Grimmett is one of his PhD students .

He had been married since 1951 and had two sons.

Fonts

  • with David Handscomb: Monte Carlo Methods , Methuen, London 1964
  • with Simon Ralph Broadbent: Percolation processes , part 1,2, Proc. Cambridge Philosophical Society, Vol. 53, 1957, pp. 629-641, 642-645

literature

  • Geoffrey Grimmett, Dominic Welsh (editors): Disorder in physical systems , Oxford University Press 1990 (Festschrift for John Hammersley)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ At that time, little value was placed on a doctorate in Oxford and Cambridge.
  2. ↑ Geoffrey Grimmett in his obituary in The Independent
  3. ^ JM Hammersley, KW Morton: Poor Man's Monte Carlo , J. Royal Statist. Soc., Ser. B, 16.1 (1954), pp. 23-38
  4. ↑ On the enfeeblement of mathematical skills by Modern Mathematics and by similiar soft intellectual trash in schools and universities , Bulletin of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, Volume 4, 1968, pp. 66-85
personal data
SURNAME Hammersley, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hammersley, John Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Helensburgh
DATE OF DEATH May 2, 2004
Place of death Oxford