Leopold Pars

Leopold Alexander Pars (born January 2, 1896 in Whittlesford near Cambridge , † January 28, 1985 in Acton (London) ) was a British mathematician.

He was known to friends as Alan Pars from university days, and to the family as Leo Pars. His father Albertus McLean Pars was an accountant in an agricultural machinery factory and in his spare time a pianist and organ player. In 1899 he moved with the family to London (Shepherd's Bush). Pars attended school in Hammersmith and in 1914 won a scholarship in mathematics and physics, with which he studied at the University of Cambridge (Jesus College) from 1915 . Because of illness, he let two years pass before he took the Tripos exams in 1917. He was a good student and also active as a track and field athlete. After a master’s degree from the University of London and in 1921 won the Smith Prize at Cambridge University for an essay on vector and tensor calculus in relativity. For this he also became a Fellow of Jesus College, which he remained until the end of his life. From 1923 to 1946 he was a pre-lecturer responsible for the training of undergraduates. From 1925 to 1951 he was director of studies in mathematics at Jesus College and from 1927 to his retirement in 1961 University Lecturer . From 1958 to 1964 he became President of Jesus College and in 1959 he was one of the founders of the Department of Applied Mathematics at Cambridge.

As an applied mathematician, he is best known for his textbooks on mechanics. His Treatise on Analytic Dynamics sums up his life's work in training mathematicians at Cambridge (preparation for the Tripos exams in mechanics). Otherwise he published in the wake of his Smith essay and influenced by Joseph Larmor and Arthur Eddington early in his career on the theory of relativity.

In 1948/49 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study and at the University of California, Berkeley . After the end of his presidency of Jesus College, he traveled extensively (first to Florida Atlantic University and the University of Sydney) and lived with his sister in Acton, where his family - the parents, brother and sister and the nanny, who was also a housekeeper - moved in 1926. He never married. He was active as a mountaineer, played the piano and loved the theater.

Fonts

• Introduction to dynamics, Cambridge UP 1953
• An introduction to the calculus of variations, Heinemann 1962, Dover 2009
• A treatise on analytical dynamics, Heinemann 1965

Web links

• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Leopold Pars. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .