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Philip Hall
Times obituary
Eminent mathematician
Professor Philip Hall, FRS, an eminent mathematician who was Sadleirian Professor of Pure Mathematics at Cambridge from 1953 to 1967 died on December 30 aged 78.
He was born on April 11 1904, the son of George Hall, and educated at Christ's Hospital. In 1922 he entered King's College Cambridge, as a scholar, and after obtaining the highest honours in the Mathematical Tripos was elected to a Fellowship in 1927.
Except for a period in the War during which he worked for the Foreign Office at Bletchley Park, he remained at Cambridge throughout his career, as Lecturer from 1933, Reader in Algebra from 1951, and Sadleirian Professor from 1953 until 1967, when he elected to retire. He was made FRS in 1942 and was awarded in 1961 the Sylvester Medal of the Royal Society. From 1938 to 1941 and from 1945 to 1948 he was Honorary Secretary, and from 1955 to 1957 President, of the London Mathematical Society. He was awarded the De Morgan Medal and the Larmor Prize of the Society in 1965.
Both through his own work and through that of his research students, Hall exercised a profound influence on English Mathematics, and an influence. which was felt throughout the mathematical world. He was the country's and perhaps the world's leading group theorist over many years.
His name first passed into the terminology of algebra through an early result which showed that the so-called soluble groups. could as well be defined by an arithmetic property of their subgroups as by the usual structural property. Of his considerable published output, one might single out three pieces of work as having particularly influenced successors in the field. First, his long paper, published in the early 1930's, on the theory of groups of prime power order, contained a number of results. and, even more, a number of methods which have been extremely fruitful, not only in the theory of groups of prime power order themselves, but also in the theory of infinite nilpotent groups.
Secondly, his paper, written in collaboration with Graham Higman, on the p-lengths of soluble groups, has exerted a considerable influence on modern work on finite groups. Finally, a series of three papers on finiteness conditions in soluble groups have opened the way to an attack on a class of inifinite groups and group rings.
Hall's influence was greater than his published work alone might suggest, impressive though that work is. Many ideas entered the subject through the lecture courses which he gave at Cambridge, and through the works of his numerous students. Much of modern algebra has its genesis in Hall's ideas.
Hall's range of knowledge was extraordinary, embracing anything from agriculture to poetry, and this combined with his complete integrity, high intellectual standards and sound judgement, made him invaluable over many years as a member of the Committee of Fellowship Electors.
He greatly valued the Honorary Fellowship at Jesus College. to which he was elected in 1976, and the Honorary degrees conferred on him by Tübingen University in 1963 and Warwick in 1977.
Eminent mathematician
Professor Philip Hall, FRS, an eminent mathematician who was Sadleirian Professor of Pure Mathematics at Cambridge from 1953 to 1967 died on December 30 aged 78.
He was born on April 11 1904, the son of George Hall, and educated at Christ's Hospital. In 1922 he entered King's College Cambridge, as a scholar, and after obtaining the highest honours in the Mathematical Tripos was elected to a Fellowship in 1927.
Except for a period in the War during which he worked for the Foreign Office at Bletchley Park, he remained at Cambridge throughout his career, as Lecturer from 1933, Reader in Algebra from 1951, and Sadleirian Professor from 1953 until 1967, when he elected to retire. He was made FRS in 1942 and was awarded in 1961 the Sylvester Medal of the Royal Society. From 1938 to 1941 and from 1945 to 1948 he was Honorary Secretary, and from 1955 to 1957 President, of the London Mathematical Society. He was awarded the De Morgan Medal and the Larmor Prize of the Society in 1965.
Both through his own work and through that of his research students, Hall exercised a profound influence on English Mathematics, and an influence. which was felt throughout the mathematical world. He was the country's and perhaps the world's leading group theorist over many years.
His name first passed into the terminology of algebra through an early result which showed that the so-called soluble groups. could as well be defined by an arithmetic property of their subgroups as by the usual structural property. Of his considerable published output, one might single out three pieces of work as having particularly influenced successors in the field. First, his long paper, published in the early 1930's, on the theory of groups of prime power order, contained a number of results. and, even more, a number of methods which have been extremely fruitful, not only in the theory of groups of prime power order themselves, but also in the theory of infinite nilpotent groups.
Secondly, his paper, written in collaboration with Graham Higman, on the p-lengths of soluble groups, has exerted a considerable influence on modern work on finite groups. Finally, a series of three papers on finiteness conditions in soluble groups have opened the way to an attack on a class of inifinite groups and group rings.
Hall's influence was greater than his published work alone might suggest, impressive though that work is. Many ideas entered the subject through the lecture courses which he gave at Cambridge, and through the works of his numerous students. Much of modern algebra has its genesis in Hall's ideas.
Hall's range of knowledge was extraordinary, embracing anything from agriculture to poetry, and this combined with his complete integrity, high intellectual standards and sound judgement, made him invaluable over many years as a member of the Committee of Fellowship Electors.
He greatly valued the Honorary Fellowship at Jesus College. to which he was elected in 1976, and the Honorary degrees conferred on him by Tübingen University in 1963 and Warwick in 1977.
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