Lucy Joan Slater

Lucy Joan Slater (5 January 1922 – 6 June 2008) was a mathematician who worked on hypergeometric functions, and who found many generalizations of the Rogers–Ramanujan identities. Her advisor was Wilfrid Norman Bailey.^[1] In the early 1950s she played a leading role at Cambridge University in devising a precursor of modern computer operating systems, and subsequently she helped to develop computer programs for econometrics, working for much of the time with UK government officials.

In retirement she devoted much of her time to genealogy.

Her (unpublished) memoirs include descriptions of life as a teenager in Portsmouth during the bombing of the Second World War, and of working with early computers at Cambridge.

She is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge. In 1997 she completed a remarkable listing of all the graves and their inscriptions in the burial ground; she wrote a paper called "A Walk round the Ascension Burial Ground, Cambridge" which describes over 100 of the graves as though the reader is walking around the burial ground and includes detailed maps. The fourth edition is dated December 1994.

She herself was buried there in 2008, in the same grave as her mother Lucy Dalton Slater (1893–1975), widow of John Wardle Slater F.I.C., Admiralty chemist, buried in Portsmouth.

Recognition

In 2016 the Council of the University of Cambridge approved the use of Slater's name to mark a physical feature within the North West Cambridge Development.^[2]

Publications

• Slater, L. J. (1952). "Further Identities of the Rogers‐Ramanujan Type". Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. 2 (1): 147–167. 
• Slater, L. J. (1955). "Integrals for asymptotic expansions of hypergeometric functions". Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 6: 226–231. MR 0069952. 
• Abramowitz, Milton; Stegun, Irene Ann, eds. (1983) [June 1964]. 503.htm "Chapter 13 Confluent hypergeometric functions" Check |contribution-url= value (help). Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables. Applied Mathematics Series. 55 (Ninth reprint with additional corrections of tenth original printing with corrections (December 1972); first ed.). Washington D.C.; New York: United States Department of Commerce, National Bureau of Standards; Dover Publications. p. 503. ISBN 978-0-486-61272-0. LCCN 64-60036. MR 0167642. LCCN 65-12253. 
• Slater, Lucy Joan (1960), Confluent hypergeometric functions, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, MR 0107026 
• Slater, Lucy Joan (1966), Generalized hypergeometric functions, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-06483-X, MR 0201688  (there is a 2008 paperback with ISBN 978-0-521-09061-2)
• Fortran programs for economists, Cambridge University Press, 1967
• First steps in basic Fortran, London: Chapman & Hall, 1971
• More Fortran programs for economists, Cambridge University Press, 1972
• GEM: a general econometric matrix program, Cambridge University Press, 1976
• Dynamic regression: theory and algorithms (co-author with M. H. Pesaran), Halsted Press, 1980

References

External links

• Lucy Joan Slater at Find a Grave