Hyman Levy

Hyman Levy FRSE (1889 – 1975) was a Scottish philosopher, Emeritus Professor of Imperial College London, mathematician, political activist and fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.^[1]

The son of Minna Cohen and Marcus Levy, an art dealer in Edinburgh, Hyman was the third oldest of eight children.^[2] He went to school at George Heriot's School,^[3] and was the School Dux.^[4] Thanks to scholarships, he was able to go to Germany to study at the University of Göttingen.^[2] But because of World War I, Levy had to return to the United Kingdom. Besides having been educated at the University of Göttingen, he was also educated at the University of Oxford and the University of Edinburgh. Researching aeronautics at the National Physical Laboratory, Levy published papers and books on mathematical applications pertaining to aeronautics. He also wrote about differential equations and probability.^[2] After leaving the laboratory, he became a professor of mathematics at the Royal College of Science of Imperial College London where he later served as the head of the department. At Imperial, he is believed to have greatly improved the department of mathematics, and in recognition to his contribution, he later became the dean of the Royal College of Science.^[5]

In 1918, he married Marion Aitken Fraser,^[3] despite the disapproval of his family.^[2] They had three children. Levy was in the Labour Party from 1920 to 1931, and then in 1931 he joined the British Communist Party. Despite his theoretical allegiance to the principles of communism, Levy became disappointed by the way the Russian communists treated Jews, and published on the topic, leading to his expulsion from the party in 1958.^[3]

Following Levy's paper "On Goldbach's Conjecture" from 1963, Lemoine's conjecture is incorrectly referred to by some as "Levy's conjecture."^{[citation needed]}

References

Further reading

• G A Barnard, Hyman Levy, Dictionary of National Biography, 1971-1980 (Oxford-New York, 1986), 503-504.