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Harold Davenport
Times obituary
Leader of the British School of Number Theory
Professor Harold Davenport, F.R.S., who succeeded Mordell as the undisputed leader of the internationally respected British school of number theory, died yesterday in Cambridge.
He was the sort of mathematician who works in terms of solving problems rather than constructing theories. Nothing is easier in number theory than the enunciation of intractable significant problems: but Davenport had the flair for choosing significant but apparently hopeless problems which could just be tackled by ingenuity and hard work. He will be especially remembered for his contributions to the Geometry of Numbers and to Analytic Number Theory.
He was particularly successful as a supervisor of research. Many of the younger leaders of number theory in this country are his pupils (Roth, Rogers, Baker, and all have come under his influence). He was equally good with the less able aspirant to the Ph.D. and had the enviable gift of suggesting problems within the capacity of the pupil and yet a genuine "contribution to knowledge." He paid particular attention to presentation and not infrequently wrote out the final version himself. Indeed, to the connoisseur of style, his hand is indisputable in the papers of pupils long after they were internationally recognized authorities.
Harold Davenport was born in Accrington on October 30, 1907. He attended Accrington Grammar School and Manchester University, where he came under the notice of Mordell, who was to have a major influence on his development. As was customary then, he competed as a Manchester undergraduate in the Trinity entrance scholarship examination, was easily top of the list, and came up to Cambridge in 1927 as an affiliated student with a major scholarship and a Manchester B.Sc. (which he ignored in later life, as in his entry in Who's Who). He had a typically successful undergraduate career and went on to research. Appointingly, he was awarded only a Rayleigh Prize (not the more coveted Smith's Prize) in 1930. Cambridge in those days was the Cambridge of Littlewood and, after he returned from Oxford in 1931, of Hardy, an exciting and stimulating milieu. In 1932, Davenport was elected to a Prize Fellowship of Trinity.
It must have been around this time that the distinguished German mathematician Helmut Hasse wrote to Mordell asking him to recommend a young mathematician who would teach him English. Davenport went, spent a year in Göttingen, and collaborated in research with Hasse. In his lecture to the Oslo International Congress, Hasse records that it was Davenport's skepticism about the value of abstract methods which impelled him to prove the Riemann Hypothesis for elliptic curves. Davenport remained skeptical. It was probably at this time that Davenport acquired his fluent and accurate command of German: he used to claim that Germans would accept him as a compatriot, albeit with the accent of a distant province. (To the Anglo-Saxon ear, that province indubitably lay near the Mersey.) When his Trinity fellowship expired, Davenport went back to Manchester University, this time as assistant lecturer; Manchester must have been an exciting place in those days Despite a small establishment and a minimal budget, Mordell had managed to find a niche for surprisingly many bright young mathematicians, many of them refugees. In 1940, while still an assistant lecturer, Davenport was elected F.R.S. and in 1941 he was appointed to the vacant chair at University College of North Wales, Bangor. There in 1944 he married a fellow Lancastrian, Anne Lofthouse, on the staff of the modern anguages department. In 1945 Davenport was translated to the Astor professorship of mathematics at University College London, and in 1958 was elected the third Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge in succession to Littlewood and Besicovitch.
Davenport was a natural conservative. "All changes are for the worse," he used to say with complete conviction. He was entirely out of sympathy with the waves of change in the teaching of mathematics but accepted them as an inevitable evil. Selective in the enjoyment of modern technology, he never entered an aeroplane, would use a lift if no alternative existed (at the International Mathematics Congress in Moscow he trudged up and down the interminable stairs of Stalin's skyscraper), and preferred to send his papers for publication written in his characteristically neat hand. He loved to travel and, surprisingly, enjoyed the United States, to which he made many visits. But he disliked postwar Germany, feeling that too much of the Nazi outlook had survived, and it was only the enchantment of the Gauss Visiting Professorship of Göttingen which induced him to return for a semester in 1966. He had a wide circle of mathematical friends and a steady stream of visitors passed through his hospitable home in Cranmer Road.
He was president of the London Mathematical Society from 1957 to 1959, was awarded the Adams Prize in 1941, and the Sylvester Medal of the Royal Society in 1967.
Leader of the British School of Number Theory
Professor Harold Davenport, F.R.S., who succeeded Mordell as the undisputed leader of the internationally respected British school of number theory, died yesterday in Cambridge.
He was the sort of mathematician who works in terms of solving problems rather than constructing theories. Nothing is easier in number theory than the enunciation of intractable significant problems: but Davenport had the flair for choosing significant but apparently hopeless problems which could just be tackled by ingenuity and hard work. He will be especially remembered for his contributions to the Geometry of Numbers and to Analytic Number Theory.
He was particularly successful as a supervisor of research. Many of the younger leaders of number theory in this country are his pupils (Roth, Rogers, Baker, and all have come under his influence). He was equally good with the less able aspirant to the Ph.D. and had the enviable gift of suggesting problems within the capacity of the pupil and yet a genuine "contribution to knowledge." He paid particular attention to presentation and not infrequently wrote out the final version himself. Indeed, to the connoisseur of style, his hand is indisputable in the papers of pupils long after they were internationally recognized authorities.
Harold Davenport was born in Accrington on October 30, 1907. He attended Accrington Grammar School and Manchester University, where he came under the notice of Mordell, who was to have a major influence on his development. As was customary then, he competed as a Manchester undergraduate in the Trinity entrance scholarship examination, was easily top of the list, and came up to Cambridge in 1927 as an affiliated student with a major scholarship and a Manchester B.Sc. (which he ignored in later life, as in his entry in Who's Who). He had a typically successful undergraduate career and went on to research. Appointingly, he was awarded only a Rayleigh Prize (not the more coveted Smith's Prize) in 1930. Cambridge in those days was the Cambridge of Littlewood and, after he returned from Oxford in 1931, of Hardy, an exciting and stimulating milieu. In 1932, Davenport was elected to a Prize Fellowship of Trinity.
It must have been around this time that the distinguished German mathematician Helmut Hasse wrote to Mordell asking him to recommend a young mathematician who would teach him English. Davenport went, spent a year in Göttingen, and collaborated in research with Hasse. In his lecture to the Oslo International Congress, Hasse records that it was Davenport's skepticism about the value of abstract methods which impelled him to prove the Riemann Hypothesis for elliptic curves. Davenport remained skeptical. It was probably at this time that Davenport acquired his fluent and accurate command of German: he used to claim that Germans would accept him as a compatriot, albeit with the accent of a distant province. (To the Anglo-Saxon ear, that province indubitably lay near the Mersey.) When his Trinity fellowship expired, Davenport went back to Manchester University, this time as assistant lecturer; Manchester must have been an exciting place in those days Despite a small establishment and a minimal budget, Mordell had managed to find a niche for surprisingly many bright young mathematicians, many of them refugees. In 1940, while still an assistant lecturer, Davenport was elected F.R.S. and in 1941 he was appointed to the vacant chair at University College of North Wales, Bangor. There in 1944 he married a fellow Lancastrian, Anne Lofthouse, on the staff of the modern anguages department. In 1945 Davenport was translated to the Astor professorship of mathematics at University College London, and in 1958 was elected the third Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge in succession to Littlewood and Besicovitch.
Davenport was a natural conservative. "All changes are for the worse," he used to say with complete conviction. He was entirely out of sympathy with the waves of change in the teaching of mathematics but accepted them as an inevitable evil. Selective in the enjoyment of modern technology, he never entered an aeroplane, would use a lift if no alternative existed (at the International Mathematics Congress in Moscow he trudged up and down the interminable stairs of Stalin's skyscraper), and preferred to send his papers for publication written in his characteristically neat hand. He loved to travel and, surprisingly, enjoyed the United States, to which he made many visits. But he disliked postwar Germany, feeling that too much of the Nazi outlook had survived, and it was only the enchantment of the Gauss Visiting Professorship of Göttingen which induced him to return for a semester in 1966. He had a wide circle of mathematical friends and a steady stream of visitors passed through his hospitable home in Cranmer Road.
He was president of the London Mathematical Society from 1957 to 1959, was awarded the Adams Prize in 1941, and the Sylvester Medal of the Royal Society in 1967.
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