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Hyman Levy
Times obituary
Professor Hyman Levy, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, University of London, Imperial College, who died on Thursday, aged 85, was born in Edinburgh and was educated at George Heriot's School and at the universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, and Göttingen.
After serving for four years as a member of the Aerodynamics Research staff at the National Physical Laboratory, he joined the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College in 1920 as an assistant professor. He remained there for 34 years until his retirement in 1954. He was appointed full professor in 1923 and became head of the department in 1946.
His presence in the council chamber will be remembered by many colleagues for his remarkable gift of quick appreciation and sensible commentary; and his regular attendance at student gatherings, either as lecturer after classes or dinner speaker, an art at which he excelled, will also be long remembered with affection by generations of students.
The governing body of the college showed its appreciation of his abilities by electing him to be one of its members and by appointing him Dean of the Royal College of Science in 1946, an office which he held for the unusually long period of six years. In 1957, after his retirement, the highest honor the college can bestow, its Fellowship, was conferred upon him.
Levy's most significant contributions to mathematics and the development of mathematical teaching arose from his interests in numerical methods. This, and the related subject of statistics, remained his favourite field of mathematics throughout his life.
One of his earliest books, written in 1934, dealt with the numerical solution of differential equations, and another, written 24 years later after his retirement, with the related subject of finite difference equations. Both books were written in collaboration with former students.
No notice of Hyman Levy would be complete without some reference to his lifelong interests in Marxism. To those who knew him well, it was clear that his philosophy and political theory stemmed from a deep humanitarianism. Late in life, after a visit to Russia, he lost some of his fervour for the practices of communism.
Levy was a member of a delegation from the British Communist Party which visited Russia in October 1956. He was given the specific task of investigating reports that Jewish artists and intellectuals had been tortured and killed and Jewish culture suppressed. His findings appealed to him, and he wrote an exposure of the persecution between 1948 and 1952 of Russian Jews, which was printed in the communist weekly World News in January 1957.
Levy, for long one of the admired intellectuals of the British Communist Party, pursued his theme in an impassioned speech at the party's Easter congress at Hammersmith in April. How much of the persecution, he demanded, had been known to the leaders of the British Communist Party?
Later, a highly critical review by R. Palme Dutt, the British Communist Party's eminence grise, of Levy's book Jews and the National Question, contained the ominous words: "With this book, Levy finally parts company with Marxism."
In April 1958, Levy wrote to the New Statesman saying, "The official journal of the British Communist Party, horrified that I presume to criticize the Soviet Union in any way at all, devoted seven columns to what is in effect personal vilification and misrepresentation of my views. My expulsion follows inevitablely."
The titles of some of his books are characteristic of the thoughts which, with mathematics, dominated his life: Science, Curse or Blessing; Social Thinking; or, Science in an Industrial Society. In this aspect of his life, he was not only a thinker and a writer, but also, in a certain sense, a man of action. He was, for example, chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Labour Party from 1924 to 1930.
Neither in his mathematics nor his political interests was Levy content merely to study and write; he strove to express his views wherever possible in speech and action. He will be sadly missed by a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. In 1918, he married M. A. Fraser. There were two sons and one daughter from the marriage.
Professor Hyman Levy, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, University of London, Imperial College, who died on Thursday, aged 85, was born in Edinburgh and was educated at George Heriot's School and at the universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, and Göttingen.
After serving for four years as a member of the Aerodynamics Research staff at the National Physical Laboratory, he joined the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College in 1920 as an assistant professor. He remained there for 34 years until his retirement in 1954. He was appointed full professor in 1923 and became head of the department in 1946.
His presence in the council chamber will be remembered by many colleagues for his remarkable gift of quick appreciation and sensible commentary; and his regular attendance at student gatherings, either as lecturer after classes or dinner speaker, an art at which he excelled, will also be long remembered with affection by generations of students.
The governing body of the college showed its appreciation of his abilities by electing him to be one of its members and by appointing him Dean of the Royal College of Science in 1946, an office which he held for the unusually long period of six years. In 1957, after his retirement, the highest honor the college can bestow, its Fellowship, was conferred upon him.
Levy's most significant contributions to mathematics and the development of mathematical teaching arose from his interests in numerical methods. This, and the related subject of statistics, remained his favourite field of mathematics throughout his life.
One of his earliest books, written in 1934, dealt with the numerical solution of differential equations, and another, written 24 years later after his retirement, with the related subject of finite difference equations. Both books were written in collaboration with former students.
No notice of Hyman Levy would be complete without some reference to his lifelong interests in Marxism. To those who knew him well, it was clear that his philosophy and political theory stemmed from a deep humanitarianism. Late in life, after a visit to Russia, he lost some of his fervour for the practices of communism.
Levy was a member of a delegation from the British Communist Party which visited Russia in October 1956. He was given the specific task of investigating reports that Jewish artists and intellectuals had been tortured and killed and Jewish culture suppressed. His findings appealed to him, and he wrote an exposure of the persecution between 1948 and 1952 of Russian Jews, which was printed in the communist weekly World News in January 1957.
Levy, for long one of the admired intellectuals of the British Communist Party, pursued his theme in an impassioned speech at the party's Easter congress at Hammersmith in April. How much of the persecution, he demanded, had been known to the leaders of the British Communist Party?
Later, a highly critical review by R. Palme Dutt, the British Communist Party's eminence grise, of Levy's book Jews and the National Question, contained the ominous words: "With this book, Levy finally parts company with Marxism."
In April 1958, Levy wrote to the New Statesman saying, "The official journal of the British Communist Party, horrified that I presume to criticize the Soviet Union in any way at all, devoted seven columns to what is in effect personal vilification and misrepresentation of my views. My expulsion follows inevitablely."
The titles of some of his books are characteristic of the thoughts which, with mathematics, dominated his life: Science, Curse or Blessing; Social Thinking; or, Science in an Industrial Society. In this aspect of his life, he was not only a thinker and a writer, but also, in a certain sense, a man of action. He was, for example, chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Labour Party from 1924 to 1930.
Neither in his mathematics nor his political interests was Levy content merely to study and write; he strove to express his views wherever possible in speech and action. He will be sadly missed by a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. In 1918, he married M. A. Fraser. There were two sons and one daughter from the marriage.
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