Patrick du Val
Encyclopedia
Patrick du Val was a British
mathematician
, known for his work on algebraic geometry
, differential geometry, and general relativity
. The concept of Du Val singularity
of an algebraic surface
is named after him.
, Cheshire
. He was the son of a cabinet maker, but his parents' marriage broke up. As a child, he suffered ill-health, in particular asthma
, and was educated mostly by his mother. He was awarded a first class honours degree from the University of London External Programme
in 1926, which he took by correspondence course.
He was a talented linguist, for example teaching himself Norwegian
so that he might read Peer Gynt
. He also had a strong interest in history but his love of mathematics led him to pursue that as a career. His earliest publications show a leaning towards applied mathematics.
His mother moved to a village near Cambridge
and he became acquainted with Henry Baker
, Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry
. Baker turned his interest towards algebraic geometry
, and he entered Trinity College, Cambridge
in 1927.
of the universe and Grassmann's tensor calculus. His doctorate was on algebraic geometry and in his thesis he generalised a result of Schoute
. He worked on algebraic surfaces and later in his career became interested in elliptic functions.
He received his Ph.D.
with a thesis entitled 'On Certain Configurations of Algebraic Geometry Having Groups of Self-Transformations Representable by Symmetry Groups of Certain Polygons' under Baker's supervision in 1930. While a research student he had many famous geometers including Hodge
as fellow research students, and he formed a particular friendship with Coxeter
and Semple. He was elected a fellow of Trinity in 1930 for four years. During that time he travelled extensively, visiting Rome
and working with Federigo Enriques
, then in 1934 Princeton University
, where he attended lectures by James W. Alexander
, Luther P. Eisenhart
, Solomon Lefschetz
, Oswald Veblen
, Joseph Wedderburn
, and Hermann Weyl
.
In 1936, Du Val took up an assistant lectureship in the Mathematics Department
at Manchester
, where he stayed for five years. He was then funded by a British Council
scheme to go to Istanbul University
as a professor of pure mathematics. There he learnt Turkish
and even wrote a book on coordinate geometry in that language.
After a spell in the United States
at the University of Georgia
, he returned to the United Kingdom
, first taking up a post in Bristol
, then at the University College London
in 1954, where he remained until he retired in 1970. Together with Semple he led the London Geometry Seminar during the time he spent in London.
Patrick Du Val had three children Nicholas, Paula and Belinda and 10 grandchildren. His oldest daughter is also a PhD and is married to the current Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the university of Wales Lampeter.
He is remembered as an interesting character. For example in Manchester during the war he was remembered as a cloaked figure striding the parapets, as he carried out his duties as a fire warden. He was also known for startling the travelling public by carrying around a large string bag filled with garishly coloured stellated icosahedra.
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
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....
, known for his work on algebraic geometry
Algebraic geometry
Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics which combines techniques of abstract algebra, especially commutative algebra, with the language and the problems of geometry. It occupies a central place in modern mathematics and has multiple conceptual connections with such diverse fields as complex...
, differential geometry, and general relativity
General relativity
General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics...
. The concept of Du Val singularity
Du Val singularity
In algebraic geometry, a du Val singularity, also called simple surface singularity, Kleinian singularity, or rational double point, is a singularity of a surface that is a double cover branched over a curve with an A-D-E singularity. They are the canonical singularities in dimension 2...
of an algebraic surface
Algebraic surface
In mathematics, an algebraic surface is an algebraic variety of dimension two. In the case of geometry over the field of complex numbers, an algebraic surface has complex dimension two and so of dimension four as a smooth manifold.The theory of algebraic surfaces is much more complicated than that...
is named after him.
Early life
Du Val was born in Cheadle HulmeCheadle Hulme
Cheadle Hulme is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, in Greater Manchester, England. It is southwest of Stockport and southeast of the city of Manchester. It lies in the Ladybrook Valley on the Cheshire Plain, and the drift consists mostly of boulder clay, sands and gravels...
, Cheshire
Cheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...
. He was the son of a cabinet maker, but his parents' marriage broke up. As a child, he suffered ill-health, in particular asthma
Asthma
Asthma is the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath...
, and was educated mostly by his mother. He was awarded a first class honours degree from the University of London External Programme
University of London External Programme
The University of London International Programmes is a division of the University of London that manages external study programmes.Several colleges and institutes of the University of London offer degrees through the programme, including Birkbeck, Goldsmiths, Heythrop College, Institute of...
in 1926, which he took by correspondence course.
He was a talented linguist, for example teaching himself Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
so that he might read Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, loosely based on the fairy tale Per Gynt. It is the most widely performed Norwegian play. According to Klaus Van Den Berg, the "cinematic script blends poetry with social satire and realistic scenes with surreal ones"...
. He also had a strong interest in history but his love of mathematics led him to pursue that as a career. His earliest publications show a leaning towards applied mathematics.
His mother moved to a village near Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
and he became acquainted with Henry Baker
H. F. Baker
Henry Frederick Baker was a British mathematician, working mainly in algebraic geometry, but also remembered for contributions to partial differential equations , and Lie groups....
, Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry
Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry
The Lowndean chair of Astronomy and Geometry is one of the two major Professorships in Astronomy at Cambridge University, alongside the Plumian Professorship...
. Baker turned his interest towards algebraic geometry
Algebraic geometry
Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics which combines techniques of abstract algebra, especially commutative algebra, with the language and the problems of geometry. It occupies a central place in modern mathematics and has multiple conceptual connections with such diverse fields as complex...
, and he entered Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
in 1927.
Research in geometry
Du Val's early work before becoming a research student was on relativity, including a paper on the De Sitter modelDe Sitter space
In mathematics and physics, a de Sitter space is the analog in Minkowski space, or spacetime, of a sphere in ordinary, Euclidean space. The n-dimensional de Sitter space , denoted dS_n, is the Lorentzian manifold analog of an n-sphere ; it is maximally symmetric, has constant positive curvature,...
of the universe and Grassmann's tensor calculus. His doctorate was on algebraic geometry and in his thesis he generalised a result of Schoute
Pieter Hendrik Schoute
Pieter Hendrik Schoute was a Dutch mathematician known for his work on regular polytopes and Euclidean geometry.- References :...
. He worked on algebraic surfaces and later in his career became interested in elliptic functions.
He received his Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
with a thesis entitled 'On Certain Configurations of Algebraic Geometry Having Groups of Self-Transformations Representable by Symmetry Groups of Certain Polygons' under Baker's supervision in 1930. While a research student he had many famous geometers including Hodge
W. V. D. Hodge
William Vallance Douglas Hodge FRS was a Scottish mathematician, specifically a geometer.His discovery of far-reaching topological relations between algebraic geometry and differential geometry—an area now called Hodge theory and pertaining more generally to Kähler manifolds—has been a major...
as fellow research students, and he formed a particular friendship with Coxeter
Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter
Harold Scott MacDonald "Donald" Coxeter, was a British-born Canadian geometer. Coxeter is regarded as one of the great geometers of the 20th century. He was born in London but spent most of his life in Canada....
and Semple. He was elected a fellow of Trinity in 1930 for four years. During that time he travelled extensively, visiting Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
and working with Federigo Enriques
Federigo Enriques
Federigo Enriques was an Italian mathematician, now known principally as the first to give a classification of algebraic surfaces in birational geometry, and other contributions in algebraic geometry....
, then in 1934 Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, where he attended lectures by James W. Alexander
James Waddell Alexander II
James Waddell Alexander II was a mathematician and topologist of the pre-World War II era and part of an influential Princeton topology elite, which included Oswald Veblen, Solomon Lefschetz, and others...
, Luther P. Eisenhart
Luther P. Eisenhart
Luther Pfahler Eisenhart was an American mathematician, best known today for his contributions to semi-Riemannian geometry.-Life:...
, Solomon Lefschetz
Solomon Lefschetz
Solomon Lefschetz was an American mathematician who did fundamental work on algebraic topology, its applications to algebraic geometry, and the theory of non-linear ordinary differential equations.-Life:...
, Oswald Veblen
Oswald Veblen
Oswald Veblen was an American mathematician, geometer and topologist, whose work found application in atomic physics and the theory of relativity. He proved the Jordan curve theorem in 1905.-Life:...
, Joseph Wedderburn
Joseph Wedderburn
Joseph Henry Maclagan Wedderburn was a Scottish mathematician, who taught at Princeton University for most of his career. A significant algebraist, he proved that a finite division algebra is a field, and part of the Artin–Wedderburn theorem on simple algebras...
, and Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl was a German mathematician and theoretical physicist. Although much of his working life was spent in Zürich, Switzerland and then Princeton, he is associated with the University of Göttingen tradition of mathematics, represented by David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski.His...
.
In 1936, Du Val took up an assistant lectureship in the Mathematics Department
School of Mathematics, University of Manchester
The School of Mathematics at the University of Manchester is one of the largest mathematics departments in the United Kingdom, with around 80 academic staff and an undergraduate intake of roughly 400 a year and another 200 postgraduate students...
at Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, where he stayed for five years. He was then funded by a British Council
British Council
The British Council is a United Kingdom-based organisation specialising in international educational and cultural opportunities. It is registered as a charity both in England and Wales, and in Scotland...
scheme to go to Istanbul University
Istanbul University
Istanbul University is a Turkish university located in Istanbul. The main campus is adjacent to Beyazıt Square.- Synopsis :A madrasa, a religious school, was established sometime in the 15th century after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. An institution of higher education named the...
as a professor of pure mathematics. There he learnt Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
and even wrote a book on coordinate geometry in that language.
After a spell in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
at the University of Georgia
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...
, he returned to the United Kingdom
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...
, first taking up a post in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, then at the University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
in 1954, where he remained until he retired in 1970. Together with Semple he led the London Geometry Seminar during the time he spent in London.
Patrick Du Val had three children Nicholas, Paula and Belinda and 10 grandchildren. His oldest daughter is also a PhD and is married to the current Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the university of Wales Lampeter.
Later life
After retirement, Du Val returned to Istanbul. For three years he held the same post as before, and then as if reversing history, settled down to a retirement in Cambridge.He is remembered as an interesting character. For example in Manchester during the war he was remembered as a cloaked figure striding the parapets, as he carried out his duties as a fire warden. He was also known for startling the travelling public by carrying around a large string bag filled with garishly coloured stellated icosahedra.
Work
Zbl entry I II III- Patrick Du Val, On surfaces whose canonical system is hyperelliptic, Canadian Journal of Mathematics 4 (1952), 204–221.
- Patrick Du Val, Homographies, quaternions and rotations, Oxford Mathematical Monographs, Clarendon PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
, OxfordOxfordThe city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, 1964. - Patrick Du Val, Elliptic functions and elliptic curves, London Mathematical SocietyLondon 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:* * *...
Lecture Note Series, No. 9, Cambridge University PressCambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
, LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
-New YorkNew York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, 1973. ISBN 0521200369