Sidney Luxton Loney

Sidney Luxton Loney (born March 16, 1860 in Chevithorne , Devon , † May 16, 1939 in London ) was a British mathematician .

Life

He attended Maidstone Grammar School in Tonbridge and received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of London . He then studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge . There he was enrolled at Sidney Sussex College . His Tripos examinations for undergraduate he joined in 1882 as 3rd Wrangler from - that being the third best of the vintage. In recognition of this achievement, he was elected a Fellow of the College three years later . He held this position until 1891, when he accepted a call to the capital and became professor of mathematics at Royal Holloway College, University of London. Loney was considered a patient, inspiring, and direct lecturer. An obituary from the university named his own distrust of innovations and continued:

“To the stubborn progressives he seemed to be an incorrigible reactionary. But much of his displeasure with change sprang from a sentimentality to tradition and even those who differed from him in procedural matters recognized and admired his dedication to the college and its interests. "

- Bruce Berndt , Robert Alexander Rankin (eds.) : Ramanujan: Essays and Surveys.

Loney wrote numerous books and specialist articles, some of which appeared in multiple editions. His book The elements of statics and dynamics from 1897 is still considered the most widely used standard work on the subject at universities in South India. One of his works, Plane Trigonometry , significantly influenced the scientific maturation of the Indian child prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan . The then eleven-year-old received the book in 1899 from sponsors and worked through it autodidactically within two years . Apart from school textbooks, it was his first contact with a formal scientific publication.

Publications

• A treatise on elementary dynamics . Cambridge University Press , Cambridge, 1889.
• Mechanics and hydrostatics for beginners . Cambridge University Press , Cambridge, 1893.
• Plan trigonometry . Cambridge University Press , Cambridge, 1893.
• The elements of coordinate geometry . Macmillan & Co., London, 1895.
• The elements of statics and dynamics . Cambridge University Press , Cambridge, 1897.
• An elementary treatise on the dynamics of a particle and of rigid bodies . Cambridge University Press , Cambridge, 1909.
• An elementary treatise on statics . Cambridge University Press , Cambridge, 1912.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bruce Berndt, Robert Alexander Rankin (Ed.): Ramanujan: Essays and Surveys. In: History of Mathematics, Vol. 22, American Mathematical Society  / London Mathematical Society , 2001, p. 12.