MATHEMATICAL GENIUS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 13056, 26 January 1943, Page 6

MATHEMATICAL GENIUS

NEW ZEALANDER'S GIFTS Honorary Degree Conferred Former Dimeclin Resident The honorary degree of Doctor or Science in the University of New Zealand has been conferred by the New Zealand University Senate on Dr Alexander Craig Aitken, M.A. (N.Z.), D.Sc. (Edin). F.R.S. The granting of this degree is restricted to exceptional recommendations and only a few awards have been made.

Well known for his academic achievements in New Zealand and abroad, Dr Aitken was educated at Otago Boys' High School and Otago University and was for a time a master at Otago High School. By energetic studies in an overseas hospital while recovering from wounds received during the last war, Dr Aitken was awarded senior scholarships in pure mathematics, applied mathematics and Latin, secui'ing first place in each instance. He was encouraged to proceed to Edinburgh University, where he undertook a research course in 1925. He submitted a thesis for the degree of Ph.D., but it was so highly thought of that he was granted a Doctorate of Science and appointed lecturer in and mathematical economics at Edinburgh, and he still holds this appointment.

Dr Aitken is well known for remarkable mathematical capabalities, being considered by authorities to be one of the most gifted in the world. As a result of his output of original papers he was in 1939 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1932 the Royal Society of Edinburgh awarded him the MacdougalBrisbane Medal and Prize award, which had been granted to the scientist, Joseph Lister, 60 years previously, for his work on the germ theory of putrefaction. In 193 2, Professor Whittaker, of Edinburgh University, stated that he thought Dr Aitken the greatest British algebraist since Dr Arthur Cayley (182195).