Tag Archives: mathematics

A few of my favourite [festive!] things

At the start of the festive period, I had the best of intentions to post a festive blog post for every day of advent.  Alas, there isn’t much mention of Christmas in Thomson’s papers – even his family photo albums are a decidedly festive free zone!  However, having three working days left until we break up for the festive period, I thought I would share (you’ve guessed it!) three festive items from the collection…

1) Christmas card to Thomson from his students…

Christmas Card

Christmas Card inside

Quite possibly the best Christmas card I’ve ever come across – spelling ‘Christmas’ in mathematical terms.  Genius!  And if that wasn’t zany enough, there is a wonderfully nebulous poem on the inside!

In all seriousness, this is one of my favourite items in the collection – it is signed by 13 of Thomson’s students, who were obviously very fond of him, and I bet the master of Factorial Analysis loved it!

 

2) Christmas card from Andromache

Card inner Card outer

Andromache was the wife of Thomson’s son, Hector.  Hector was a classicist, so the mythical love story of Hector and Andromache would have been one familiar to him.  She is a frequent character in the collection, and is mentioned throughout Thomson’s correspondence by friends and family – Thomson and Lady Thomson appear to have been particularly fond of her.  The card depicts her native Cyprus.

3) A Christmas gift from Lady Thomson:

Christmas book

 

Christmas message

The gift is a thoughtful one – Thomson was brought up near Newcastle, and the sights in this book would have been familiar to him.  The book has clearly been well loved and frequently referred to, and has some beautiful images of Newcastle.

Holy Jesus Hospital Surtees

With that, I’d like to wish you all a lovely Christmas and a productive New Year!

If anyone recognises their signature or that of anyone else’s on the card, do please get in touch (Emma.Anthony@ed.ac.uk)

 

‘Encounters of a mathematician’…

For the last few weeks, I have been cataloguing the papers of mathematician, Walter Ledermann (1911-2009).  The collection largely composes of highly mathematical letters from Thomson to Ledermann.  Having the somewhat dubious distinction of failing mathematics twice, its fair to say I had misgivings!

My failure as a young mathematician was due in part to my ready dismissal of mathematics as a dull, dry, monotonous subject (but in the main, a serious lack of talent!).  I remember somewhat haughtily telling my long-suffering teacher that I liked subjects about people.  Mathematics, as far as I was concerned, lacked any humanity and any discernible art.  How wrong I was.

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Ledermann as a young man, from his autobiography

Ledermann, a German-Jewish refugee, was more than used to such criticism being levelled at the subject – the art form – of his choice.  In fact, he opens his autobiography, Encounters of a Mathematician, with the following:

Mathematics is a soulless occupation devoid of feeling and human values.

But that, Ledermann tells us, was never his experience:

I feel strongly that mathematics can and should form part of human relationships.

Ledermann grew up in Berlin, proving himself a talented violinist and mathematician from an early age.  He loved music, and despite growing up in the midst of the depression, attended concerts regularly by any means possible.  By the 1930s, the Berlin that Ledermann called home had changed rapidly, and he and his family were no longer welcome.  It was his love of mathematics that gave him hope – despite the anti-Semitism he encountered, Ledermann’s ability, talent, and enthusiasm could be neither denied nor quashed.  In fact, Ledermann’s talent for mathematics quite literally saved his life.

On completion of his degree at the University of Berlin in 1934, Ledermann won a scholarship created by students and citizens of St Andrews to support a Jewish refugee.  He received a warm welcome from his fellow students, his lecturers, and the local community at St Andrews, and tells us: ‘it is no exaggeration to affirm that I owe my life to the people of St Andrews’ (Encounters of a Mathematician).

Ledermann completed his PhD after just two years, and found himself at the University of Edinburgh.  This would be the start enduring friendships between Ledermann and the brilliant and troubled mathematician, A C Aitken, as well as Professor Godfrey Thomson.

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Professor Sir Godfrey Thomson

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Alexander Craig Aitken

Ledermann quickly became Thomson’s mathematical assistant (or ‘tame mathematician’, as he puts it!), assisting him in writing The Factorial Analysis of Human Ability.  Thomson and his contemporaries used Factorial Analysis to understand human differences (mathematics and humanity again!), and this is still a technique used by psychologists today.  Thomson spoke to Ledermann in fluent German at their first meeting, much to Ledermann’s delight, and the working relationship was a successful one:

My work with Godfrey Thomson was inspiring, creative, and intimate.  We met daily during the morning break at Moray House, where the Department of Education was situated.  After we had briefly surveyed the progress of our research on the previous day, Miss Matthew, his charming and highly efficient secretary, brought in the coffee and some delicious buttered ginger bread.

The very intensity with which he pursued his ideas, was a great stimulus for me to solve the mathematical problems he had passed on to me.  Godfrey Thomson did not claim to be a mathematician.  Although he understood mathematical formulae when they were presented to him, he preferred to verify his ideas by constructing elaborate numeral examples from which the theoretical result could be guessed with some confidence.

Sadly much of Ledermann’s replies to Thomson are absent.  Thomson sends Ledermann pages and pages of calculations with explanatory notes, then his next letter will be one thanking Ledermann for the brief formula he has sent in return (Thomson at one point refers to Ledermann’s formulae as ‘very pretty’!).  The letters also show the warmth of feeling between the two, with Thomson frequently enquiring of Ledermann’s family, many of whom were still in Germany, and telling Ledermann about his own family.

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An example of the small postcards Thomson sent Ledermann

Ledermann treasured the letters.  In a letter to Lady Thomson, who was attempting to write Thomson’s biography, he writes:

I have over a hundred letters from Sir Godfrey, written between 1937 and 1946, some of them short notes, others carefully worked out in the form of a research paper, with many interesting questions and illustrations.  I greatly treasure the correspondence, not merely on account of its considerable scientific, and, may I add, aesthetic value, but also because it contains so many typical examples of that human warmth and sympathy for which Sir Godfrey finds a place even at the beginning or at the end of a mathematical letter.

Letter from Ledermann to Lady Thomson, Coll-1310/1/1/1/17

Ledermann returned to St Andrews after working with Thomson, and would go on to accept teaching positions at the University of Manchester, and the University of Sussex.  His love of mathematics continued to endear him to students and fellow lecturers, and he continued to undertake revision lectures for students for years following his retirement.  His wife, Ruth, was a social worker and therapist, and they retired together to London, where Ledermann passed away in 2009.

For Ledermann, the beauty of the equations passed between himself and Thomson were no different to the music of his violin – each displayed ingenuity and art.  His love of mathematics was the source of the most satisfying ‘human encounters’ he had throughout his lifetime, and the correspondence between himself and Thomson serves as a reminder of the beauty and humanity of mathematics.

Sources: Walter Ledermann’s autobiography, Encounters of a Mathematician

Catching the spirit of the thing

Last week, we were pleased to welcome Professor Peter Fenton from Otago University, New Zealand, who was researching the work of A C Aitken.  A deeply troubled and brilliant mathematician, Aitken was a phenomemal human calculator, with a photographic memory which could recall Pi to 1000 decimal places. His work impacted algebra, numerical analysis, and statistics.   Additionally, he was a polyglot, a poet, a writer, and a violist.

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Aitken in his later years

My interest was immediately piqued – always a fan of historical gossip, I had been intrigued when I discovered this letter from Aitken, who helped Thomson during the writing of his book Factorial Analysis of Human Ability, in Thomson’s collection:

Aitken1derAitken2der

Who was this lady who possessed ‘just about every quality of combined physique, charm, character, and intelligence as would enrich any nation possessing her type in good proportions’?!  Aitken continues ‘valuable as her chosen career may prove to the nation, in the end, there was a still more valuable career of which the nation was being defrauded, partly, of course, through the blind crassness of men younger than ourselves’.  I can forgive Aitken’s comments which suggest a woman’s biological capabilities should be valued over any others, since he is also rather unfair to his own sex!  But I can’t help but wonder who this nameless, charming lady is – or just what Aitken and Thomson ‘mentioned’ about her in their previous discussion!

Alexander Craig Aitken (1895–1967) was born in Dunedin, in Otago, New Zealand.  He was an exceptional student, winning several class prizes and graduating top of his class.  His Father, who was a shopkeeper, allowed Aitken to do the accounts from an early age – this he enjoyed, and often credited his later mental arithmetic skills as stemming from this period.  In 1913, he was awarded a full scholarship to attend Otago University, studying mathematics and languages (Latin and French).  His experience of mathematics at University was unpleasant, although he met his future wife there, a brilliant botanist credited with establishing the Botany department at Otago.

100_1484Winifred Aitken

Aitken’s studies were interupted by the First World War, and he enlisted in 1915 at the age of 20.  He documented his experience of the War in his book, Gallipoli to the Somme.    It was first drafted in 1917, but Aitken’s published version was re-edited in 1962.  Aitken’s account is at once harrowing and moving, as can be seen when he describes a friend’s death:

Two or three yards beyond this pair we found Harper lying, his thigh badly fractured, but calm and in full possession of his senses.  We asked if it was very bad.  He simply said: ‘I think I’m done for’…he spoke quietly, with the same high calm, far beyond his years – he was, I suppose, my own age, twenty-one, perhaps twenty-two – and he knew better than we, for he had lost too much blood and died of wounds a week later.  He was of very heavy build and we could not move him an inch without causing him pain; but at that moment I caught site of a group of men, carrying a stretcher with them, coming through the gap and towards the trees.  It was a volunteer party lead by Captain Hargrest, always the first to think of his men, and including Sergeant-Major Howden (killed at the Somme, 27th September 1916), Sergeant Carruthers (killed at Paschendaele, 12th October 1917), and Sergeant Frank Jones (died of wounds received at the Somme, 22nd September 1916).  These men laid Harper on the Stretcher and carried him in, I following as dawn was breaking.

Gallipoli to the Somme p.103

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Aitken c.1915

Throughout the war, Aitken carried a cheap violin, deriving comfort from the art he had learned as a child from a blind violinist who guided his playing through touch and ear.   Such luxuries were prohibited – space in the trenches was extremely limited, but Aitken’s comrades took it in turns to hide the contraband instrument.

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Aitken’s music manuscripts, many of which are his own compositions

Aitken sustained wounds to his arm and foot in 1917, which ended his army career.  He returned to Otago, completing his studies, and becoming a mathematics master at his old school, Otago Boys High School.  In 1923, he gained a postgraduate scholarship to study under Sir Edmund Whittaker.  During his studies, his wife fell pregnant with their first child, and Aitken, feeling the full weight of his financial, familial, and academic responsibilities, began to feel physically and mentally ill.

His research was not prospering, and he feared he would be unable to submit his thesis on time.  Months of frenzied calculations followed, cultimating in weeks of illness Aitken describes as being ‘like food poisoning’.  Following his recovery, Aitken set about his thesis, and found the solution to the problem instantameously, submitting his thesis (by his own admission) hurredly.  The thesis was awarded the DSc rather than PhD, an honour which AItken modestly describes as ‘a surprise’.

A fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh at the age of thirty followed, as well as the society’s highest honour, the Gunning Victoria Jubilee Prize.  In 1936, Aitken became a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1936; and in 1946 the chair of Pure Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh.  For a short time during World War II, he also worked at Bletchley Park, though this part of his life remains a mystery.

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Some of the many cuttings showing Aitken’s achievements

These achievements were overshadowed by his breakdown in 1927.  Aitken, who had had something of a prepensity for mysticism from an early age, had been subject to hallucinations throughout his life.  These began to intensify:

Clermiston Road, which leads up Corstorphine Hill to Clermiston Avenue, would suddenly twist in front of me; the branches of trees, full of the foliage of June, would suddenly become drenched with the heaviness of some further dimension, arresting, symbolising something, apocalyptic.  The world “apocalyptic” is the only one by which I can describe the moonlight, the sycamore tree at nightfall, the further Pentlands, the edge of the skyline at Curriehill, which often seemed fringed with fire; and I could not see that this fire was the fire of my own nerves.

To Catch the Spirit, p.90

‘The fire of his own nerves’ would plague him throughout the rest of his career, ordinary women would look like angels and he would see indescribable colours.  His wife, who had long since given up her distinguished work, devoted herself to looking after Aitken.  This, according to their daughter, Margaret Mott, she did not grudge, fully believing in Aitken and his abilities.  He spent much time towards the end of his career campaigning against decimilsation, his zeal eventually attracting ridicule, and died in 1967.

In his excellent introduction to Aitken’s memoirs, compiled from papers in the possession of his daughter Margaret Mott, Fenton tells us the title derives from ‘a letter taken up with the proof of a certain theorem, which Aitken signed ‘Q.E.D and A.C.A’ (ad captandam animam=to catch the spirit of the thing)’ (To Catch the Spirit, p.7).  The title is a wonderfully evocative one, especially fitting in light of the following passage:

I believe we are surrounded the whole time by marvellous powers, are immersed in them, closer than breathing,and I think that all great music, poetry, mathematics, and real religion come from a world not distant but right in the midst of everything, permeating it. 

To catch the spirit, p.23

Numbers, and Aitken’s intrinsic gift of understanding them, were ‘the spirit of the thing’, allowing Aitken to view the world around him in a way no one else could.  In his review of Aitken’s memoirs, Wimp asks if any of us would choose to have such an incredible gift in light of the terrible price it comes with.  I end with what I would imagine Aitken’s reply to be, from a passage regarding his breakdown:

It is customary to pass quickly over such an experience, as an illness,a regrettable pathological interruption in a career otherwise uniform, a passing spasm of suffocation.  When I consider the great gain of experience, the widening even of personal sympathies, the sudden openings onto a hundred vistas unsuspected before, the emergence of new standards in literature music and painting… I could not but regard my own breakdown of importance…for since that time, there is not a tree, not a turn in a road, nor a hilltop, not even a swaying reed, but speaks of the beauty, the at first terrible beauty and mystery of the world.

To Catch the Spirit, p.94

Sources:

Aitken, A C, To Catch the Spirit,  with an introduction by Peter Fenton, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995)

Aitken, A C, Gallipoli to the Somme, (London: Oxford University Press, 1963)

Wimp, Jet, accessed 27/09/2012

Oxford DNB