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The death of Professor J.E.Littlewood, FRAS, FRS, on 1977 September 6 in his 93rd year saw the passing of one of the greatest and most versatile mathematicians and thinkers of this century. For Cambridge it also severed the final link with a great tradition in that Littlewood was the last surviving Senior Wrangler (from the Tripos of 1905). He was Fellow of Trinity for almost 70 years and Senior Fellow for 20 years.
His interests were extraordinarily diverse, and almost any matter coming to his attention he began to look at straight away from a research point of view. He tackled with success a number of the most profound and formidable problems of mathematics, some in the long collaboration with his famed contemporary, G.H.Hardy. He himself outlived Hardy by 30 years, and continued, mathematically active, well into his 80s, carrying his great age with little infirmity and much serenity of spirit.
He was elected FRS in 1916, and became FRAS on 1921 February 11. Although publishing few astronomical papers (none in Monthly Notices regrettably), he always kept a critically watchful eye on equations arising in astronomy. His writings, lectures, and conversation were all enlivened by delightful touches of humour and graphic illustration in everyday terms of intricate matters. The instability of the equations of stellar structure (for outward integration) was for him 'the hook or slice' effect. When informed that invalid inferences were being made by astronomers from the Jacobi-integral in the problem of three bodies, his reply began, 'How big are the noises that sin?". Such examples of his wit are legion. He could sum up situations most of us only vaguely feel, as, for instance, returning once from his first lecture of the year, given seemingly to exactly the same young faces as in every former year, he protested, 'You'd think they'd know it by now!".
Coming to his actual contributions to theoretical astronomy, the writer once ventured to remark to him in regard to the discovery of Neptune that the still-repeated praise, 'the greatest mathematical triumph of all time', seemed rather excessive. 'Always thought so', said JEL, 'scholarship-mechanics probably all that's needed. Then, after some searching questions about perturbations, he went to work and soon decided that the thing to try to find, from the unexplained residuals of Uranus, was its time of conjunction with the unknown Neptune, the same conclusion E.W.Brown had come to 25 years before (Mon. Not. R. astr. Soc., 92, 80, 1931), though somehow Brown got the absurd result 'close to 1840', when the true value was 1821-74. Littlewood devised an ingeniously simple, but quite different approach, with the arithmetic done by hand (and his feet the whiles on the mantelpiece: the posture he claimed he always did his work in), which yielded 1822-3, only about 6 months away. Had Bode's law held, instead of failing so grossly this one occasion it would have helped, JEL's result alone would have placed Neptune within about 1º (in the ecliptic) of its true position for decades ahead. Even on Bode, it would have meant only 13° out at the crucial time (1846), well within the zodiacal rectangle so funereally investigated by Challis.
Littlewood's contributions to pure mathematics were so numerous and substantial, it is surprising he found time to devote attention to astronomy at all. His actual publications were limited to about half a dozen papers on topics such as "The problem of bodies', and 'The Lagrange-configuration in the problem of three bodies'. One characteristic result of his in the former area was, 'That a system of gravitating point-masses can never make a permanent capture even of a speck' – his phrase, of course. The theorem implies that sooner or later some particle of the system must be ejected for good, but, as JEL put it, 'The proof in no way shows that it is the speck that must go out it might be Jupiter!' Typically he added, 'For the professional there is a one-line proof – if you can call Jacobian-determinants "one-line"?
Discussion by Littlewood himself of some of his astronomical papers (and of a great many other interesting scientific topics, all in his own inimitable style) is to be found in his remarkable but, alas, all too brief book, A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen, 1953. (A full obituary notice will appear in Biogr. Mem. R. Soc., 24, 1978.)
R.A.LYTTLETON
His interests were extraordinarily diverse, and almost any matter coming to his attention he began to look at straight away from a research point of view. He tackled with success a number of the most profound and formidable problems of mathematics, some in the long collaboration with his famed contemporary, G.H.Hardy. He himself outlived Hardy by 30 years, and continued, mathematically active, well into his 80s, carrying his great age with little infirmity and much serenity of spirit.
He was elected FRS in 1916, and became FRAS on 1921 February 11. Although publishing few astronomical papers (none in Monthly Notices regrettably), he always kept a critically watchful eye on equations arising in astronomy. His writings, lectures, and conversation were all enlivened by delightful touches of humour and graphic illustration in everyday terms of intricate matters. The instability of the equations of stellar structure (for outward integration) was for him 'the hook or slice' effect. When informed that invalid inferences were being made by astronomers from the Jacobi-integral in the problem of three bodies, his reply began, 'How big are the noises that sin?". Such examples of his wit are legion. He could sum up situations most of us only vaguely feel, as, for instance, returning once from his first lecture of the year, given seemingly to exactly the same young faces as in every former year, he protested, 'You'd think they'd know it by now!".
Coming to his actual contributions to theoretical astronomy, the writer once ventured to remark to him in regard to the discovery of Neptune that the still-repeated praise, 'the greatest mathematical triumph of all time', seemed rather excessive. 'Always thought so', said JEL, 'scholarship-mechanics probably all that's needed. Then, after some searching questions about perturbations, he went to work and soon decided that the thing to try to find, from the unexplained residuals of Uranus, was its time of conjunction with the unknown Neptune, the same conclusion E.W.Brown had come to 25 years before (Mon. Not. R. astr. Soc., 92, 80, 1931), though somehow Brown got the absurd result 'close to 1840', when the true value was 1821-74. Littlewood devised an ingeniously simple, but quite different approach, with the arithmetic done by hand (and his feet the whiles on the mantelpiece: the posture he claimed he always did his work in), which yielded 1822-3, only about 6 months away. Had Bode's law held, instead of failing so grossly this one occasion it would have helped, JEL's result alone would have placed Neptune within about 1º (in the ecliptic) of its true position for decades ahead. Even on Bode, it would have meant only 13° out at the crucial time (1846), well within the zodiacal rectangle so funereally investigated by Challis.
Littlewood's contributions to pure mathematics were so numerous and substantial, it is surprising he found time to devote attention to astronomy at all. His actual publications were limited to about half a dozen papers on topics such as "The problem of bodies', and 'The Lagrange-configuration in the problem of three bodies'. One characteristic result of his in the former area was, 'That a system of gravitating point-masses can never make a permanent capture even of a speck' – his phrase, of course. The theorem implies that sooner or later some particle of the system must be ejected for good, but, as JEL put it, 'The proof in no way shows that it is the speck that must go out it might be Jupiter!' Typically he added, 'For the professional there is a one-line proof – if you can call Jacobian-determinants "one-line"?
Discussion by Littlewood himself of some of his astronomical papers (and of a great many other interesting scientific topics, all in his own inimitable style) is to be found in his remarkable but, alas, all too brief book, A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen, 1953. (A full obituary notice will appear in Biogr. Mem. R. Soc., 24, 1978.)
R.A.LYTTLETON
John Edensor Littlewood's obituary appeared in Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 19:3 (1978), 354-355.