David Gawen Champernowne (9 July 1912 – 19 August 2000)[1][2][3] was an English economist and mathematician.
After academic work at Cambridge and the London School of Economics, he worked at the London School of Economics and Cambridge University. During World War II, he first worked in the Prime Minister's Statistical department to supply quantitative information to help Winston Churchill make decisions; then, in 1941, he moved on to become a programme director in the Ministry of Aircraft Production. He was Professor of Statistical Economics at the University of Oxford (1948–1959), and professor of Economics and Statistics at the University of Cambridge (1970–2000).[1][2]
He published work on Champernowne constant in 1933, while still an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge.[1][2] Working with an old college friend Alan Turing in 1948, he helped develop one of the first chess-playing computer programs.[4] The book for which he is most renowned, synthesising a life's work, Economic Inequality and Income Distribution (Cambridge University Press), was published in 1998.[1]
His co-editors at the Economic Journal found him to be "modest, quirky and humorous".[2]
His grave is at the new Church at Dartington, Devon, built by his family in the 1870s to replace the ancient Church at Dartington Hall, the family seat.