The Copson and Curle Lectures, University of St Andrews

The Copson and Curle Lectures, University of St Andrews Colin M Campbell and Edmund F Robertson University of St Andrews, Scotland Abstract We discuss two named lecture series given at the University of St Andrews over the last thirty years. They are the Curle Lectures named after Professor Newby Curle, formerly Gregory Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of St Andrews, and the Copson Lectures named after Professor Edward Copson, formerly Regius Professor of Mathematics at the University of St Andrews. We will discuss the range of topics of the lectures and give brief biographical information about the lecturers. We will also discuss the impact of these lecture series both on the student population and also on the wider public in St Andrews. Introduction In this paper we wish to discuss two named lecture series given at the University of St Andrews, Scotland over the last thirty years. One series is named after Professor Newby Curle, Gregory Professor of Applied Mathematics and a specialist in fluid mechanics and boundary layer theory, and the other series is named after Professor Edward Copson, formerly Regius Professor of Mathematics at St Andrews and an expert in classical analysis. It will be interesting to note that, although one of the professors, Professor Curle, was an applied mathematician and the other, Professor Copson, was a pure mathematician the two series both contain a mix of applied mathematics, pure mathematics and statistics. When I (Colin Campbell) first went to the University of St Andrews in 1965 as an assistant lecturer in Mathematics I was introduced to Professor Edward Copson who thought that I was one of the students. I had to tell him that I was his new lecturer! I came to St Andrews from an undergraduate degree in Edinburgh followed by an MSc from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. One of my fellow students at Edinburgh had come straight to St Andrews, having been an undergraduate at Edinburgh and then immediately becoming a lecturer at St Andrews. How the British university job market has changed! Professor Copson, the Regius Professor of Mathematics, was, as noted above, a distinguished classical analyst. Born on 21 August 1901 in Coventry England, Edward Copson's mother was Emily Read and his father was Thomas Charles Copson , a motor engineer and inventor who worked in Coventry. Educated at St John's College Oxford, Copson was appointed by Edmund T Whittaker to a lectureship at Edinburgh in1922. He moved to St Andrews in 1930 and after a year at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich in 1934, he returned to the University of St Andrews to a chair in mathematics in Queen's College, Dundee then part of the University of St Andrews. In 1950 he became Regius Professor of Mathematics in St Andrews. From my (Colin Campbell) undergraduate days I knew him as the author of 'Introduction to the Theory of Functions of a Complex Variable', [2]. Both he and his wife Beatrice, the daughter of Edmund T Whittaker, were very welcoming to me. He was the head of Mathematics until his retirement in 1969. I (Edmund Robertson) was an undergraduate at St Andrews and was taught functions of a complex variable by Copson. When I was trying to decide where to do research I went to Copson who said, "They're about to open a new university, the University of Warwick, in my home town of Coventry and I've very excited about it. Why not apply there." I took his advice and have always been happy that I did. For a biography of Copson see [3]. The other main person in the story is Samuel Newby Curle. Following his own wishes, he was always known as Newby Curle. He was born to Samuel Curle and Edith Newby Holmes on 18 June 1930 in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England. Educated at the University of Manchester, he worked at the National Physical Laboratory (1954-61) and the University of Southampton (1961-67) before being appointed to the Gregory Chair of Mathematics at the University of St Andrews in 1967. He married Shirley Kingsford Campion (1934-2016) in 1956. When I (Edmund Robertson) was appointed as an Assistant Lecturer in St Andrews in 1968, going into the coffee room full of lecturers who had taught me was difficult. Newby was the one who realised this and immediately went out of his way to make it easy for me. I was always grateful for his understanding and kindness. Newby died while out walking near Settle, North Yorkshire, on 27 June 1989. The Annual Report for the Department of Applied Mathematics of the University of St Andrews for 1988- 89 states: The Department suffered a great loss when Professor S N Curle died suddenly in June. Over more than twenty years in St Andrews Newby Curle had done much to build up teaching and research in Applied Mathematics. His wisdom and good humour will be much missed. Friends in St Andrews and elsewhere have contributed generously to a fund in his memory and it is hoped to use the income to support a Memorial Lecture to undergraduates. For a biography of Newby Curle see [4]. We will begin with the Curle Memorial lectures. The Newby Curle Memorial Lectures In what follows we will give the title of the lecture and give a brief biography of the speaker. The following Curle Memorial Lectures have been given: 1990 Professor Sir James Lighthill The first Curle lecture was given by Professor Sir James Lighthill, who was Newby Curle's PhD Supervisor at the University of Manchester. The lecture on 'Aerodynamics' was introduced by the Principal of the University of St Andrews, Professor Struther Arnott. Born in France in 1924 Michael James Lighthill was educated at Winchester College and at Trinity College Cambridge. After positions at the University of Manchester he became director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough in 1959. He was a founder and, from 1965-67, first president of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. In 1969 he moved to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. From 1979 to 1989 he was Provost of University College London. His life came to a sad end in 1998 in a swimming accident as he attempted to swim round the Island of Sark in the Channel Islands. 1992 Professor T BrooKe Benjamin The second Curle lecture was given by Professor T Brooke Benjamin (Oxford). It was given on 8 December 1992. He talked on 'Averaged hamiltonian methods in fluid mechanics'. Born in Wallasey, England in 1929 T Brooke Benjamin was a student at the University of Liverpool (BEng 1950), Yale University (MEng 1952) and King's College, Cambridge (PhD 1955). He was a fellow of King's from 1955 to 1964. From 1979 until his death in 1995 he was Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Mathematical Institute, Oxford and a fellow of the Queen's College, Oxford. He was well known as a mathematical physicist and mathematician, particularly in fluid mechanics. He had an early joint paper with Sir James Lighthill on surface waves (Proc. Roy. Soc. London 1954) [1]. 1994 James D Murray The third Curle lecture was given by Professor James D Murray (Princeton) on 'Mathematical Biology'. Born in Moffat, Scotland in 1931 he studied at the University of St Andrews where he graduated with a BSc in Mathematics in 1953 and with a PhD In 1956. His doctoral advisor was Andrew Ronald 'Ron' Mitchell whom we both remember well. After posts at Durham, Harvard, University College London and Oxford, James Murray became professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan in 1965. In 1969 he became professor of mathematical biology at the University of Oxford and founder and director of the Centre for Mathematical Biology. In retirement as well as being an Emeritus Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he is also professor emeritus of applied mathematics at the University of Washington. His area of research is the many and varied aspects of mathematical biology. 1996 Robin Wilson The fourth Curle Memorial Lecture to undergraduates in St Andrews was given by Dr Robin Wilson (Open University) who gave an entertaining and informative talk on graph theory. Born in 1946, he was at school at University College School, Hampstead, London. Robin is a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford and has both an MA and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He is an emeritus professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Open University. He also has a First Class Honours degree in Humanities with Music from the Open University. His research areas are graph theory, particularly colouring problems, and the history of mathematics, particularly British Mathematics and mathematics in the 17th century. He is also interested in the history of graph theory and combinatorics. 2000 Sir Brian Hoskins The fifth Curle Memorial lecture was given by Professor Brian Hoskins FRS, President of the Royal Meteorological Society on 20 April 2000. The title of his talk was 'Forecasting weather and climate: a chancy business'. Born in 1945, Brian James Hoskins was educated at the University of Cambridge with a BA in 1966 and a PhD in 1970. He has been at the University of Reading since 1976. From 2008- 2014 he was the first Director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College, London. From 1998-2000 he was President of the Royal Meteorological Society. He received a knighthood in 2007. In a report on the lecture by Professor Hoskins we have the following description. Brian Hoskins discussed how over fifty forecasts are made at one time to work out the probability of different kinds of weather in a few days time, yet only one of these forecasts (if any!) are given to the public.

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