Peter M. Neumann

Biography

Born in December 1940, Neumann was a son of the German-born mathematicians Bernhard Neumann and Hanna Neumann. He gained a BA degree from The Queen's College, Oxford in 1963, and a DPhil degree from the University of Oxford in 1966. On completing his doctorate, Neumann was named a Tutorial Fellow at the Queen's College, Oxford, and in 1967 he became a lecturer at the University of Oxford.{{cite journal

He was the first Chairman of the United Kingdom Mathematics Trust, from October 1996 to April 2004, succeeded by Bernard Silverman.

Neumann showed in 1997 that Alhazen's problem (reflecting a light ray off a spherical mirror to hit a target) cannot be solved with a straightedge and compass construction. Although the solution is a straightforward application of Galois theory it settles the constructibility of one of the last remaining geometric construction problems posed in antiquity.

In 2003, the London Mathematical Society awarded him the Senior Whitehead Prize.{{cite web |archive-date=17 December 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051217180519/http://www.lms.ac.uk/activities/prizes_com/pastwinners.html#swhitehead |url-status=dead

After retiring in 2008, he became an Emeritus Fellow at the Queen's College.

Neumann's work in the history of mathematics includes his 2011 publication The Mathematical Writings of Évariste Galois, an English language book on the work of French mathematician Évariste Galois (1811–1832). Neumann was a long-standing supporter of the British Society for the History of Mathematics, whose Neumann Prize is named in his honour.

Neumann was the president of the Mathematical Association from 2015 to 2016.

Neumann died from COVID-19 on 18 December 2020, ten days before his 80th birthday, during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom.

Personal life

Neumann married Sylvia Bull in 1962. She was a fellow mathematics undergraduate at Oxford, where they met.

References

References

1. "Dr Peter M Neumann, O.B.E.". [[The Queen's College, Oxford]].
2. Leddy, Dorothy. (2020). "M500 298".
3. [http://www.maa.org/awards/ford.html The Lester R. Ford Award], MAA, retrieved 2010-02-01.
4. (1986). "Book Review of ''Galois Theory'' by Harold M. Edwards". Amer. Math. Monthly.
5. (2004). "The UK Mathematics Trust Yearbook 2003–2004". United Kingdom Mathematics Trust.
6. Highfield, Roger. (1 April 1997). "Don solves the last puzzle left by ancient Greeks". [[Electronic Telegraph]].
7. "Officers of the Order of the British Empire". [[BBC]].
8. Neumann, Peter M.. (2011). "The Mathematical Writings of Évariste Galois". [[European Mathematical Society]].
9. "Neumann Prize". [[British Society for the History of Mathematics]].
10. (21 December 2020). "Dr Peter Neumann (1940–2020)". London Mathematical Society.
11. Neumann, David. (4 January 2021). "Peter Neumann obituary". The Guardian.
12. Cameron, Peter. (18 December 2020). "Peter Neumann".