Overseas Mathematical Scholars Awarded Honorary Degrees in Ireland (Jan 2025)
There has always been plenty of to-and-fro of significant mathematical talent between the island of Ireland and the rest of the Europe, and beyond.
The story includes names ranging from George Boole (1815-1864) and Dave Lewis (1944-2021), who came from abroad and settled in Ireland, making their mathematical marks as residents of Cork and Dublin respectively, to Tyrone's Frank Murnaghan (1893-1976) and Longford's David Conlon, who went the other direction.
This month our goal is to account for those overseas mathematicians (as well as mathematical physicists, and some mathematically trained physicists and engineers) whose scholarship or service was recognised in Ireland (north or south) by the awarding of honorary doctoral degrees.
By "overseas" we mean people born and educated overseas, whose careers were not spent on the island of Ireland. Hence, we exclude any Irish people who were later honoured in their homeland, whether they had Irish careers (such as NN and SS) or overseas careers (such as William Thomson, Michael Carroll and Adrian Raftery). As already noted above, we also do not document outsiders whose professional lives have largely been spent in Ireland (e.g., Michel Destrade).
We do include Englishman ET Whittaker, whose first Irish honorary degree was awarded right before the start of his 1906-1911 stint as Royal Astronomer of Ireland (based at TCD).
Another tricky issue is the case of northerners like Joseph Larmor and Jocelyn Bell Burnell, both of whom were both honoured south of the border (TCD DSc 1903, and NUI DSc 2009, respectively). Such examples are not featured below.
There are Nobel laureates (in physics) below whose initial training was mathematical. However, some others are not included, such as Charles Parsons (1854-1931), William Abney (1843-1920), and James Chadwick (1891-1974).
We do document honorees who supervised Irish doctoral students overseas, such as Jim Knowles or Jim Clunie, as well as scholars who served on advisory boards or as external examiners at Irish universities (e.g., Graham Higman, Jim Clunie).
Of related interest are those overseas scholars who have been appointed honoree Members of the Royal Irish Academy, including Claude Shannon (1985), Roger Penrose (2001), Arthur Jaffe (2009), and Cedric Villani (2012).
Please alert us to any omissions or errors.
Thanks to David Malone, Des MacHale, Tom Laffey, Tony O'Farrell, Luke Drury, Ted Hurley, Jim Boyd, Carl Murray, and several others, for valuable input.
Last updated 13 Jan 2025.
The tercentenary of TCD in 1892 saw the college award a great number of honorary degrees, among them the 8 which we start with below.
Before that, there were some isolated examples that don't quite fall under our purview. In 1851, TCD had awarded Englishman George Boole an LLD (his name having been proposed by Charles Graves), but he had already been appointed as the first professor of maths at Queen's College, Cork. Ten years earlier, in 1841, the distinguished English mathematician J. J. Sylvester had received ad eundum BA and MA degrees from TCD to enable him to take up a post in the USA (he had been educated at Cambridge but was prevented from graduating there in 1837 because he was Jewish).
TCD certainly lead the field for several decades in the awarding of honorary doctorates, but in time, the Queen's colleges (later universities) in Belfast, Dublin, Galway and Cork, and then UCD, also honoured overseas mathematicians in this way, often under the QUB and NUI banners.
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01. Luigi Cremona (1830-1903) was born 7 December in Pavia, Lombardy, in what is now Italy. He was educated at the Univ of Pavia (Laurea, doctorate in civil engineering, 1853). After teaching in Cremona and Milan, he lectured at the third level in Bologa, Milan, and finally at Sapiemza in Rome. He originated the field of graphical statics, was one of the founders of the Italian school of algebraic geometry, and was also a leader in secondary school maths reform. In 1892, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. |
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02. Edward Routh (1831-1907) was born 20 January in Quebec, now Canada, and grew up there and in London, England. He was educated at University College London (BA 1849, MA 1853) and Cambridge (MA & senior wrangler 1854). He is perhaps best remembered as a leading Tripos coach at Cambridge, but he made significant contributions to mechanics and to what later became control systems theory. In 1892, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. In 1882 he supervised the PhD of Belfast's Joseph Larmor. |
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03. Simon Newcomb (1833-1909) was born 12 March in Wallace, Nova Scotia, and was eventually educated at Harvard (BS 1858). His career included work in astronomical observation at the US Naval Observatory and the Nautical Almanac Office DC, as well as lecturing in maths and astronomy at Johns Hopkins Univ. His key work on determining astronomical constants set standards used for almost a century. He seems to have been the first to observe what is now known as Benford's Law. In 1892, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. Wikipedia / MacTutor / www |
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04. Paul Gordan (1837-1912) was born 27 April in Breslau, Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland). He was educated at Breslau (Dr phil 1862), his thesis "On geodesics on spheroids" being done under Carl Jacobi. While his main work was in invariant theory and algebraic geometry, he is also notable for providing simplified proof that both e and π are transcendental. In 1892, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. |
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05. John Strutt (aka Lord Rayleigh, 1842-1919) was born 12 November in Langford Grove, Essex, England. He was educated at Cambridge (BA as senior wrangler 1865). For some time, he funded his own research (on both scattering and soiund) on the family estate, later spending a few years as prof of physics at both Cambridge and the Royal Institution. His work explained why the sky is blue. In 1892, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. He received the Nobel Prize in 1904. |
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06. George Darwin (1845-1912, son of Charles) was born 9 July, in Downe, Kent, England. He was educated at Cambridge (BA as second wrangler 1868, MA 1871), and worked in diverse areas of science, applies maths and astronomy. In 1892, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. He was an invited speaker at the 1908 ICM in Rome. |
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07. James Glaisher (1848-1928) was born 5 November in London, and was educated at Cambridge (BA as second wrangler 1871). He published extensively in number theory, special functions and astronomy. In 1892, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. |
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08. Joseph Thomson (1856-1940, father of George below) was born 18 December in Manchester, England, and was educated at Cambridge (BA as second wrangler 1876, MA 1883). Among his numerous accomplishments in experimental physis was the discovery of the electron (1897). In 1892, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1904. Wikipedia / MacTutor |
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09. Percy MacMahon (1854-1929) was born 26 Sep in Sliema, Malta, and grew up in England. After an early career in the military in India, he returned to the Royal Military Academy at Woolich, in London, where he completed advanced classes in 1881. For many years he lectured there in maths and physics, while embarking on an impressive career in research, especially symmetric functions, plane partitions, and enumerative combinatorics. .He published influential books and was also a pioneer in recreational maths. In 1897, he received an honorary DSc from TCD (other universities followed suit. |
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10. Andrew Forsyth (1858-1942) was born 18 June in Glasgow, Scotland, and was educated at Cambridge (BA as senior wrangler 1881). Most of his career was spent at Cambridge and Imperial College in London. He authored numerous influential books, in particular making French and German advances in complex variables accessible to audiences in Britain and Ireland. In 1899, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. He was a plenary speaker at the 1908 ICM in Rome. |
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11. William Burnside (1852-1927) was born 2 July in London, and was educated at Cambridge (BA as second wrangler 1875). His career was spent at Cambridge (1875-1885) and at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. At first, his research was mostly in hydrodynamics and complex function function theory, but he is best remembered for his later work in group representations, and for his landmark book Theory of Groups of Finite Order. In 1901, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. |
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12. Edmund Whittaker (1873-1956) was born 24 October in Merseyside, England, and was educated at Cambridge (BA as second wrangler 1895). His remained at Cambridge until being appointed Andrews Prof of Astronomy at TCD (and hence Royal Astronomer of Ireland), also receiving an honorary ScD from there to mark the occasion (1906). From 1912 on, he was at Edinburgh, where he supervised the doctorate of Derry's Phil Gormley. With George Watson (see below), he co-authored a landmark analysis text known to this day as Whittaker & Watson. He was noted for his major contributions to special functions, numerical analysis, celestial mechanics, and astronomy, and ???. NUI gave him an honorary DSc in 1939, around the time he was advising de Valera on the setting up of the DIAS. |
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13. Hilda Hudson (1881-1965) was born into a mathematical family in Cambridge, and was educated at Girton (BA earned but not awarded 1903). She was one of the steamboat ladies, receiving an ad eundum MA from TCD in 1906. Her career included time at the Univ of Berlin (1904-1905), lecturing at Newnham College in Cambridge (1905-1912), Bryn Mawr (1912-1913), and West Ham Tech Inst (1913-1917). She was the only woman to present a talk at the 1912 ICM in Cambridge ("On Binodes and Nodal Curves" ). In 1913, a year in which she published 6 papers, she received an honorary DSc from TCD. She later authored a significant tome on Cremona Transformations in Plane and Space. |
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14. William Bragg (1862-1942) was born 2 July near Wigtonm Cumberland, England, and was educated at Cambridge (BA as third wrangler 1884). He started his career with almost a quarter century at the Univ of Adelaide, during which his interests switched to physics, and X-ray spectroscopy and chrystallography in particular. In 1908, he returned to Britain, sunsequently occupying positions at Univ of Leeds and Univ College London. In 1915, he received the Nobel Prize (along with his son Lawrence). In 1920, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. His students included Tipperary's John Bernaln. Wikipedia / MacTutor / www |
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15. Emil Borel (1871-1956) was born 7 Jan in Saint-Affique, northwest of Montpellier, France, and was educated at the École normale supérieure in Paris (PhD 1893), his thesis "On some points in the theory of functions" having been done under Gaston Darboux. Most of his career was spent at ENS (1897-1944), and he was a pioneer of measure theory and its application to probability, as well as being active in geometry, statistics, and games of strategy. In 1921, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. He was also a politician and served as minister of the navy. |
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16. Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) was born 28 December in Kendal, near Lancaster, England, and was educated at Owens College, Manchester (BSc 1902) and Cambridge (BA as senior wrangler 1904, MA 1905). His career was spent at the Observatoried at Greenwich (1906-1912) and Cambridge (1913-). Among his numerous contributions was the introduction and popularisation of general relativity for English speaking audiences. He received honorary degrees from TCD (ScD 1928) and NUI (DSc 1942). |
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17. George Watson (1886-1965) was born 31 January in Westward Ho! in Devon, England, and was educated at Cambridge (BA as senior wrangler 1907, MA 1908). His career was spent at Univ College London (1914-1918) and Birmingham (1918-1951). With Edmund Whittaker (see above), he co-authored a landmark analysis text known to this day as Whittaker & Watson. In 1946, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. |
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18. George Thomson (1892-1975, son of Joseph above) was born 3 May in Cambridge, England. He was educated at Cambridge (BA 1913), where his career continued (apart from the war years) until he was appointed at Aberdeen (1922-1930). Then, he was at Imperial College (1930-1952) and then back at Cambridge (1952-1962). He shared the Nobel Prize in 1937 for work on the diffraction of electrons by crystals. In 1948, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. Wikipedia / www |
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19. Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) was born 17 July in Charleroi, Belgium. His initial engineering education at the Catholic Univ of Leuven (Louvaine) was interrupted by WWI, following which he switched to maths. His 1920 DSc on "l'Approximation des fonctions de plusieurs variables réelles" was done under Charles-Jean de La Vallée Poussin. AFtering clerical studies and ordination, he focussed on mathematical astronomy in both England and the USA, obtaining a PhD at MIT in 1927 on "The Gravitational Field in a Fluid" under Harlow Shapley. The rest of his career was spent back at Leuven. His PhD lead to what is now known as the Big Bang theory, which took a while to find acceptance. In 1954, he received an honorary DSc from NUI. |
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20. Herbert Fröhlich (1905-1991) was born 9 December in Rexingen, west of Tübingen, Germany. He was educated at Munich, earning his 1930 DrIng on "Beitrag zur Berechnung von quadratischen Mastfundamenten" (Contribution to the calculation of square mast foundations) under Arnold Somerfeld. His career started at Freiberg and Leningrad, but in 1935 he fled to England. He started at Bristol (1935-1948), before settling at Liverpool (1948-1976), also holding a position at Salford starting in 1973. His is particularly remembered for his theoretical work in superconductivity and bioelectrodynamics In 1969, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. Wikipedia / MacTutor / www |
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21. Albert Green (1912-1999) was born 11 Nov in London, and was educated at Cambridge (BA 1932, PhD 1937). His thesis "1. Gliding Problems In Seaplane Theory. 2. The Equilibrium And Stability Of A Thin Twisted Strip" was done under Geoffrey Taylor. His career was spent at Durham (1939-1948), Newcastle (1948-1968), and Oxford (1968-1977). His work was in theoretical and applied mechanics of materials, and the theory of elasticity and water waves, and included collaborations with Ron Rivlin and Paul Naghdi below. In 1977, he received an honorary DSc from NUI. Cork's Jim Flavin received his PhD under Green in 1952. Wikipedia / MacTutor / Obit / Guardian / Royal Society |
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22. Jim Knowles (1931-2009) was born 14 April in Cleveland, OH, and grew up in Phoenix, AZ. He was educated at MIT (SB 1952, PhD 1957). His thesis on "Thin Elastic Helicoidal Shells" was done under Max Reissner. His career was spent at Caltech (1958-1996). He was a mathematical solid mechanician, his work being in continuum and structural mechanics. In 1980, he received an honorary DSc from NUI. His PhD students included Cork's Mick Mortell, Niall Horgan, Bob Jeffers, and Derry Connolly, as well as Kerry's Tim O'Sullivan. |
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23. Michael Atiyah (1929-2019) was born 22 April in London, and grew up there and in Lebanon, Sudan and Egypt. He was educated at Cambridge (BA 1952, PhD 1955), his thesis on "Some Applications of Topological Methods in Algebraic Geometry" being done under William Hodge. His career started at Cambridge, then switched to Oxford (1961-1969, 1972-1990), the three year gap having been spent at the IAS in Princeton. In 1990 he moved back to Cambridge. He is best known for co-founding topological K-theory, for the Atyiah-Singer index theorem, and for his work in gauge theory. He received a Fields Medal in 1966 and the Abel Prize in 2004. In 1982, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. |
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24. Jerry Ericksen (1924-2021) was born 20 December in Portland, Oregon, and was educated at the Univ of Washington (BA), Oregon State Univ and Indiana Univ at Bloomington (PhD 1951). His thesis on "Some Geometrical Problems Connected with Ideal Gas Flows" was done with David Gilbarg. His career started at the US Naval Research Lab in Washington, DC, following which he at worked at Johns Hopkins (1957-1982) and then the Univ of Minnesota (1982-1989). In 1984, he received an honorary DSc from NUI. |
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25. Ron Rivlin (1915-2005) was born 6 May in London, and was educated at Cambridge (BA 1937). His early career was in industry, including a stint at the British Rubber Producers Research Association. Soon after being awarded a ScD from Cambridge in 1952, he moved to the USA, being on the staff at Brown (1953-1967) and then Lehigh Univ (1967-1980). His expertise ranged from the mathematical theory of large elastic deformations to non-Newtonian fluid flow. In 1985, he received an honorary DSc from NUI. His PhD students at Brown included Limerick's Michael Hayes (1962) and Tipperary's Michael Carroll (1965). |
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26. Continuum mechanics pioneer Paul Naghdi (1924-1994) was born 29 Mar in Tehran, Iran, and was educated at Cornell (BE 1946) and the Univ of Michigan in Ann Arbor (MS 1948, PhD 1951). His thesis was on "Large Deformation of Elasto-Plastic Circular Plates with Polar Symmetrical Loading". He was on the faculty at Michigan until moving to Berkeley in 1968. His expertise included shell theory and plasticity. In 1987, he received an honorary DSc from NUI. He had supervised the Berkeley doctorate of Tipperary's Jim Casey in 1980. |
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27. Peter Swinnerton-Dyer (1927-2018) was bon 2 August in Ponteland, near Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and grew up there and in Shropshire. He was educated at Cambridge (BA 1911, MA 1911), where he spent much of his career. Postgraduate studies with JE Littlewood were never completed. He left academia to chair the University Grants Committee (1983-1991). A number theorist, he is remembered for the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture about elliptic curves. In 1991, he received an honorary DSc from Ulster University. |
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28. Jim Clunie (1926-2013) was born 26 October in St Andrews, Scotland, and was educated there (BS 1949), and at Aberdeen (PhD 1952). His thesis on "On Certain Topics Concerning the External Behaviour of Functions" was done under Archiband Macintyre. His career started at Univ College of North Staffordshire (aka Keele, 1952-1956), before he settled at Imperial College (1956-1981). He was also at the Open University (1981-1986) and finally York His work was in complex analysis, in particular univalent and schlicht functions. In 1988, he received an honorary DSc from NUI. He had done extensive work over the years as an external examiner for NUI. He supervised the Royal Holloway PhD of Cork's Brian Twomey in 1967. |
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29. Graham Higman (1917-2008) was born 19 January in Louth, south of Grimsby, Lincolnshire, and grew up in London, Derbyshire, and Plymouth. He was educated at Oxford (MA 1938, DPhil 1941). His thesis on "The Units of Group-Rings" was done under Henry Whitehead. After a year at Cambridge, he spent 1941-1946 doing non-mathematical work for the Met Office. He returned to academia at Manchester (1946-1956), before securing a post at Oxford (1956-1984). Finally, he was at the Univ of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the USA (1984-1986). He made considerable contributions to group theory. He served as external examiner for NUI in the mid 1960s. In 1992, he received an honorary DSc from NUI. |
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30. Walter Hayman (1926-2020) was born 6 January 1926 in Cologne, Germany, and grew up then and in Scotland. He was educated at Cambridge (BA 1947). He started his career at Newcastle, moving to Exeter in 1953, before settling at Imperial College in London (1956-1985). He then held part-time positions at York (1985-1993) and back at Imperial (1995 on). He worked in complex analysis, and is remembered for results relating to both the Bieberach conjecture and Nevanlinna theory. In 1997, he received an honorary DSc from NUI. His PhD students included Clare's Paddy Kennedy (1954+), and Cork's Paddy Barry (1959+) & Tom Carroll (1988). |
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31. Friedrich Hirzebruch (1927-2012) was born 17 October in Hamm, near Dortmund, Germany. He was educated at Münster (1950). His career started at Erlangen (1950-1952) and Princeton (1952-1955), before he settled at Bonn. He served as Donegall Lecturer in maths at TCD (1970-1971). In 1992, he received an honorary DSc from TCD. Wikipedia / MacTutor
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32. Michael Berry (1941- ) was born 14 March in Frimley, Surrey, southwest of London, and was educated at Exeter (BSc 1962) and St Andrews (PhD 1965). His thesis on "The Diffraction of Light by Ultrasound" wad done with Bob Dingle. His entire career has been spent at Bristol. His expertise includes the borders of classical and quantum physics, as applied to wave phenomenon and optics. In 1996, he received an honorary ScD from TCD. |
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33. Cathleen Morawetz (née Synge, 1923-2017) was born 5 May in Toronto, and split her early years between there and Dublin when her father Jack Synge was on the staff at TCD. She was educated at the University of Toronto (BA 1945), MIT (MSc 1946) and NYU (PhD 1951). Her thesis on "Contracting Spherical Shocks Treated by a Perturbation Method" was done under Kurt Friedrichs. Her career was spent at the Courant Institute, researching nonlinear PDEs and their applications such as wave propogation. She served as President of the American Mathematical Society (1995-1996). In 1996, she received an honorary ScD from TCD. |
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34. Salvatore Rionero (1933-2021) was born 1 January in Nola, near Naples, Italy. He was educated at Naples (1955) and spent his entire career there apart from a spell at the Univ of Bari (1968-1971). His expertise was in gyroscopic forces, and fluid and solid mechanics. In 2002, he received an honorary DSc from NUI. |
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35. Francesco de Giovanni (1955-2024) was born 7 October in Naples, Italy, and was educated at Naples (1978). His entire career was spent there (1982-2024). He was a very prolific researcher in infinite group theory. In 2006, he received an honorary DSc from NUIG. |
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36. Efim Zelmanov (1955- ) was born 7 Sep in Khabarovsk, near the Russia/China border. He was educated at Novosibirsk State Univ (MSc 1977, PhD 1980), where he worked till 1987. His thesis on "Jordan Division Algebras" was done under |
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37. Roger Penrose (1931- ) was born 8 August in Colcheter, England, and grew up in part (the war years) in London, Ontario. He was educated back in England, at University College London (BSc 1952), and Cambridge (PhD 1957). His thesis on "Tensor Methods in Algebraic Geometry" was done under Jack A. Todd. Most of his career was spent at Birkbeck College in London (1964-1973) and then at Oxford. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2020 for his work on black holes and general relativity. In 2012, he received an honorary ScD from TCD. He has been an honorary MRIA since 2001. |
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38. Don Knuth (1938- ) was born 10 January in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, and was educated at Case Inst of Technology (BS & MS 1960) and Caltech (PhD 1963). His thesis on "Finite Semifields and Projective Planes" was done under Marshall Hall. He spent most of the 1960s in the programming industry, then settled at Stanford in 1969. In 1974, he received the Turing Award. In 2015, he received an honorary DSc from UCC. His work includes the analysis of algorithms, The Art of Computer Programming book series, and the creation of TeX. Wikipedia / MacTutor / UCC / Lecture / Any Questions |
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39. Peter Higgs (1929-2024) was born 29 May in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, and grew up mostly in Bristol. He was educated at King's College London (BSc 1950, MSc 1952, PhD 1954). His thesis on "Some Problems in the Theory of Molecular Vibrations" was done under Charles Coulson & Hugh Longuet-Higgins. Most of his career was spent at Edinburgh. In 2013, he received the Nobel Prize, for mid 1960s work on the mass of subatomic particles, and the Higgs boson in particular. In 2015, he received an honorary DSc from QUB, and in 2016, he received an honorary ScD from TCD. He supervised the Edinburgh PhD of Dublin's Murrough Golden in 1970. |