MATHEMATICIAN HONOURED

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27098, 22 July 1953, Page 8

MATHEMATICIAN HONOURED

Award To Professor A. C. Aitken ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH * (New Zealand Press Association) _ DUNEDIN, July 21. The Gunning Victoria Jubilee Prize has been granted to Dunedin-born Professor A. C. Aitken, F.R.S., of the Department of Mathematics of the University of Edinburgh. The grant is made every four years by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The prize, founded in 1887, is awarded in recognition of original work in physics, chemistry, or mathematics, and was last awarded to Professor Max Bom, who is a physicist of world repute.

Professor Aitken, who was awarded the prize in recognition of his distinguished contributions in the field of pure mathematics, was a pupil and master at the Otago Boys’ High School. He was dux of the school in 191 S. In 1943 he was granted an honorary D.Sc. by the University of New Zealand, and two years ago was given the honorary degree of LL.D by the University of Glasgow. Both as a student and a master at the Otago Boys’ High School he entertained boys with his mental gymnastics. He was in demand by his pupils, who often gained greater knowledge from his practical demonstrations of memory feats and the manipulation of figures than from the ordinary channels of mathematics coaching. He went to Edinburgh and two years later was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science in mathematics. That award not only brought distinction because of the briefness of the preparation of a thesis, but it also singled out Professor Aitken as being the first New Zealander to obtain that degree for mathematical research.

Feata of Memory His remarkable feats of memory as much as his succession of achievements have brought Professor Aitken world renown. In academic circles his mathematical discoveries, his revolutionary ideas about symbols, and his lightning calculating have turned the heads of the great; but to the layman who marvels at the fantastic in human endeavour his prodigious memory performances have appealed most. His memorising of the names and addresses of the members of his platoon in France in the First World War, of the numbers of their rifles, and of the names and addresses of the next-of-kin of those men has amazed people of many countries. In one demonstration at Southampton, Professor Aitken astounded an audience nf brilliant mathematicians by writing from memory the 707 decimal places of pi, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. He wrote rapidly for a cduple of minutes and filled a whole blackboard stretching half-way across the lecture room with figures. When there was no more room he recited the remainder of the figures. Asked how he remembered them, Professor Aitken replied that he divided the figures into sets of five and submitted them to rhythm, a German waltz tune. He has squared a three-figure number in six seconds; he can square an eight-figure number in one minute; he z has calculated the square root of a five-figure number in 12 seconds; hg can factorise numUfcrs of three and four figures in about three seconds. Some of the answers run into millions, but they offer no obstacle to his calculating.