Graham Higman FRS  was a leading British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

. He is known for his contributions to group theory

Group theory

In mathematics and abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as groups.The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as rings, fields, and vector spaces can all be seen as groups endowed with additional operations and...

.

Higman was born in Louth, Lincolnshire

Louth, Lincolnshire

Louth is a market town and civil parish within the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England.-Geography:Known as the "capital of the Lincolnshire Wolds", it is situated where the ancient trackway Barton Street crosses the River Lud, and has a total resident population of 15,930.The Greenwich...

 and attended Sutton's Secondary School, Plymouth

Plymouth

Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...

, winning a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

. In 1939 he co-founded The Invariant Society

Oxford University Invariant Society

The Oxford University Invariant Society, or 'The Invariants', is a university society open to members of Oxford University, dedicated to promotion of interest in Mathematics. The society regularly hosts talks from prominent British mathematicians such as G. H. Hardy on wide ranging topics from the...

, the student mathematics society, and earned his PhD from the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

 in 1941. His thesis, The units of group-rings, was written under the direction of J. H. C. Whitehead

J. H. C. Whitehead

John Henry Constantine Whitehead FRS , known as Henry, was a British mathematician and was one of the founders of homotopy theory. He was born in Chennai , in India, and died in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1960....

.
From 1960 to 1984 he was the Waynflete Professor of Pure Mathematics at Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...

.

Higman was awarded the Senior Berwick Prize

Berwick Prizes

The Berwick Prize and Senior Berwick Prize are two prizes of the London Mathematical Society awarded in alternating years in memory of William Edward Hodgson Berwick, a previous Vice-President of the LMS. Berwick left some money to be given to the society to establish two prizes...

 in 1962 and the De Morgan Medal

De Morgan Medal

The De Morgan Medal is a prize for outstanding contribution to mathematics, awarded by the London Mathematical Society. The Society's most prestigious award, it is given in memory of Augustus De Morgan, who was the first President of the society....

 of the London Mathematical Society

London Mathematical Society

-See also:* American Mathematical Society* Edinburgh Mathematical Society* European Mathematical Society* List of Mathematical Societies* Council for the Mathematical Sciences* BCS-FACS Specialist Group-External links:* * *...

 in 1974. He was the founder of the Journal of Algebra

Journal of Algebra

Journal of Algebra is a leading international mathematical research journal in algebra. An imprint of Academic Press, it is presently published by Elsevier. Journal of Algebra was founded by Graham Higman, who was its editor from 1964 to 1984. From 1985 until 2000, Walter Feit served as its...

 and its editor from 1964 to 1984.

He was also a local preacher

Methodist local preacher

A Methodist local preacher is a lay person who has been accredited by a Methodist church to lead worship on a regular basis. Local preachers play an important role in the Methodist Church of Great Britain and other churches historically linked to it, and have also been important in English social...

 in the Oxford Circuit of the Methodist Church

Methodism

Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...

. During the Second World War he was a conscientious objector

Conscientious objector

A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....

, working at the Meteorological Office in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...

 and Gibraltar

Gibraltar

Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...

.

He died in Oxford.

See also

• Higman–Sims group, named after Donald G. Higman
  Donald G. Higman
  Donald G. Higman was an American mathematician known for his discovery, in collaboration with Charles C. Sims, of the Higman–Sims group....
  
  , but studied also by Graham Higman.
• Higman's embedding theorem
  Higman's embedding theorem
  In group theory, Higman's embedding theorem states that every finitely generated recursively presented group R can be embedded as a subgroup of some finitely presented group G...
  
  
• Feit-Higman theorem
• Higman's lemma
  Higman's lemma
  In mathematics, Higman's lemma states that the set of finite sequences over a finite alphabet, as partially ordered by the subsequence relation, is well-quasi-ordered...
  
  
• HNN extension
  HNN extension
  In mathematics, the HNN extension is a basic construction of combinatorial group theory.Introduced in a 1949 paper Embedding Theorems for Groups by Graham Higman, B. H...
  
  
• Hall–Higman theorem
  Hall–Higman theorem
  In mathematical group theory, the Hall–Higman theorem, due to , describes the possibilities for the minimal polynomial of an element of prime power order for a representation of a p-solvable group.-Statement:...
  
  
• Interview

Publications

• Graham Higman (1940), "The units of group-rings", Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, (2) 46: 231–248.
• Graham Higman and Elizabeth Scott (1988), Existentially closed groups, LMS Monographs, Clarendon Press, Oxford

External links