George Frederick James Temple

George Frederick James Temple ( born December 2, 1901 in London, † 30 January 1992 in Quarr Abbey, Isle of Wight ) was an English mathematician, physicist, and Monk.

Life and work

George Temple went to school in London and from 1918 studied at evening classes at Birkbeck College Physics. In 1922, he earned his bachelor 's degree and in 1924 assistant ( demonstrator ) of Mathematics at Imperial College London in Sydney Chapman ( he originally wanted to Alfred North Whitehead, as it dealt with relativity, but it had accepted a professorship at Harvard University). In 1925 he was at the University of Cambridge with Arthur Eddington. In 1930 he became Reader at Imperial College, and in 1932 professor of mathematics at King's College London.

During the Second World War he worked on aerospace research center of the Royal Air Force at Farnborough on aerodynamic studies, for which he was awarded the Order of the British Empire ( CBE). In 1945, he was at his old university again, but advised the way the Air Ministry on civilian air traffic control. In 1953 he, succeeding Chapman Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at Oxford University, where he remained until his retirement in 1968. In 1983 he became a Benedictine monk and withdrew to the monastery Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight.

Temple worked on various areas of theoretical physics, first on relativity theory and quantum mechanics, then aerodynamics. In the analysis he examined, among other things, the Lebesgue integral and distributions. In 1981 he published a book on the history of mathematics in the 20th century, which had cost him in his own words 10 years study. This much-praised, not too extensive (316 pages) history of mathematics from 1870 to 1970 is specifically written for mathematicians. It covers only the areas in which he has worked itself, including applications and mathematical logic. At his death he left a manuscript on the foundations of mathematics.

1943 Temple as a member ( "Fellow" ) was admitted to the Royal Society in 1970, the Sylvester Medal awarded him. 1951 to 1953 he was President of the London Mathematical Society from 1933 to 1935 and and 1953/54, its vice-president. In 1958 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Edinburgh ( Linearization and Delinearization ).

Writings

• An introduction to quantum theory. In 1931.
• The general principles of quantum theory. , 1934.
• Rayleigh 's Principle and its application to engineering. London 1933.
• An introduction to fluid mechanics. In 1958.
• The structure of the Lebesgue integration theory. Oxford, Clarendon Press 1971.
• 100 years of Mathematics - a personal view. London, Duckworth, Springer -Verlag, 1981, ISBN 0-7156-1130-5.