Alexander Aitken

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Alexander Craig Aitken, FRS FRSE FRSL (01 April 1895 – 03 November 1967) was one of New Zealand's greatest mathematicians. He studied for a PhD at the University of Edinburgh, where his thesis was considered so impressive that he was awarded a DSc in 1926, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh beforehand in 1925. Aitken took a position at Edinburgh in 1925, and remained there the rest of his life. He was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1936 for his work in statistics, algebra and numerical analysis.

Aitken was one of the best mental calculators known, and had a prodigious memory. He knew the first 2000 digits of π, and memorised the Aeneid in high school (Otago Boys High School, Dunedin, New Zealand). Unfortunately, his inability to forget the horrors he witnessed in World War I led to recurrent depression throughout his life.

He was an accomplished writer, being elected to the Royal Society of Literature in 1964 in response to the publication of his war memoirs. He was also an excellent musician, being described by Eric Fenby as the most accomplished amateur musician he had ever known, and was a champion athlete in his younger days.

An annual Aitken Prize is awarded by the New Zealand Mathematical Society for the best student talk at their colloquium. The prize was inaugurated in 1995 at the University of Otago's Aitken Centenary Conference, a joint mathematics and statistics conference held to remember Aitken a hundred years after his birth.

[edit] References

A. C. Aitken, Gallipoli to the Somme: Recollections of a New Zealand infantryman (Oxford, 1963).
I. M. L. Hunter, An exceptional talent for calculative thinking, British Journal of Psychology 53 (3) (1962), 243-258.