Richard A. Parker

Richard A. Parker in Oberwolfach

Richard Alan Parker (born January 29, 1953 in Surrey ) is a British mathematician and software engineer.

Parker studied at Cambridge University from 1971 to 1974 (graduated with first class honors ) and then worked as a freelance programmer. In the 1980s he mainly worked in Germany (including COBOL ), where he also did research at German universities, and in the 1990s he was a programmer and technical manager in various Internet companies. He is known for his contributions to algorithms in representation theory of finite groups, especially in the case of modular representations of finite simple groups.

He is co-author of the Atlas of finite groups , directed by John Horton Conway, and contributed to the monograph Sphere packings, lattices and groups , directed by Conway and Neil Sloane . He discovered the connection between Niemeier grids and deep holes in the leech grid and constructed a Moufang loop of order , which Conway used in his construction of the monster group . ${\displaystyle 2^{13}}$

From 2009 to 2014 he developed algorithms for the implementation of small cancellation theory in representation theory in Cambridge and at the University of St. Andrews . He also developed cryptographic software (consultant at nCipher, Chief Technical Officer at Cambridge Public Key Cryptography from 2001 to 2004).

As a software engineer, he worked at Amadeus Capital Partners, Various Perihelion Software, UKOnline, Medinet, among others.

Fonts

• with John Horton Conway, Robert Turner Curtis , Simon Phillips Norton , Robert Arnott Wilson : Atlas of finite groups: maximal subgroups and ordinary characters for simple groups, Oxford University Press 1985, ISBN 0-19-853199-0 .
• with Christopher Jansen, Klaus Lux, Robert Wilson: An Atlas of Brauer Characters, London Mathematical Society Monographs, Oxford University Press, 1995

Web links

• Entry on linkedin