Prof Arthur Geoffrey Walker FRS

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

(17 July 1909 in

Watford Watford () is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, 15 miles northwest of Central London, on the River Colne. Initially a small market town, the Grand Junction Canal encouraged the construction of paper-making mills, print works, and ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For gov ...

, England – 31 March 2001) was a British

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

who made important contributions to

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...

and

physical cosmology Physical cosmology is a branch of cosmology concerned with the study of cosmological models. A cosmological model, or simply cosmology, provides a description of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and allows study of f ...

. Although he was an accomplished

geometer A geometer is a mathematician whose area of study is geometry. Some notable geometers and their main fields of work, chronologically listed, are: 1000 BCE to 1 BCE * Baudhayana (fl. c. 800 BC) – Euclidean geometry, geometric algebra * ...

, he is best remembered today for two important contributions to

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...

. Together with H. P. Robertson, they devised the well-known Robertson-Walker metric for the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker cosmological models, which are

exact solutions In mathematics, integrability is a property of certain dynamical systems. While there are several distinct formal definitions, informally speaking, an integrable system is a dynamical system with sufficiently many conserved quantities, or first i ...

of the Einstein field equation. Together with

Enrico Fermi Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" an ...

, he introduced the notion of Fermi–Walker differentiation.

Early life

He was born in

on 17 July 1909 the son of Arthur John Walker (b.1879), a coach builder, and his wife, Eleanor Joanna Gosling. Walker attended Watford Grammar School for Boys and won a scholarship to

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...

, where he graduated with first class honours in Mathematics. He then studied at

Merton College, Oxford Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, ...

. He then went as a postgraduate to

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1 ...

, studying under Prof

Arthur Eddington Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. He was also a philosopher of science and a populariser of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the lumi ...

and gaining his first doctorate (PhD).

Academic career

Walker took up a post as Lecturer at

Imperial College Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

in 1935; the following year he was appointed as Lecturer in Pure Mathematics at the

University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

, a post he held until 1947, when he moved to the

University of Sheffield , mottoeng = To discover the causes of things , established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions: – Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield , type = Pu ...

as Professor of Pure Mathematics. In 1946 he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

. His proposers were Harold Stanley Ruse, Sir

Edmund Taylor Whittaker Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker (24 October 1873 – 24 March 1956) was a British mathematician, physicist, and historian of science. Whittaker was a leading mathematical scholar of the early 20th-century who contributed widely to applied mathema ...

, David Gibb and William Edge. He won the Society's

Keith Medal The Keith Medal was a prize awarded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy, for a scientific paper published in the society's scientific journals, preference being given to a paper containing a discovery, either in mathe ...

for the period 1947/49. In 1952 he returned to Liverpool University, in 1962 becoming Dean of its Faculty of Science. Having been elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in 1955, he served as a member of the organisation's council from 1961 to 1962. He served as President of the

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh Mathematical ...

from 1962 to 1963. Walker retired from Liverpool University in 1974.

Publications

*''Harmonic Spaces'' (1962) *''An Introduction to Geometrical Cosmology'' (1975)

Awards and honours

*Fellow of the

Royal Astronomical Society (Whatever shines should be observed) , predecessor = , successor = , formation = , founder = , extinction = , merger = , merged = , type = NG ...

, 1934 *Fellow of the

, 1946 *

Berwick Prize The Berwick Prize and Senior Berwick Prize are two prizes of the London Mathematical Society awarded in alternating years in memory of William Edward Hodgson Berwick, a previous Vice-President of the LMS. Berwick left some money to be given to the ...

, 1947 *

, 1947-9 *Fellow of the

, 1955

Personal life

Walker married Phyllis Ashcroft Freeman in 1939; the couple were accomplished ballroom dancers. He died in

Chichester Chichester () is a cathedral city and civil parish in West Sussex, England.OS Explorer map 120: Chichester, South Harting and Selsey Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton B2 edition. Publishing Date:2009. It is the only ...

on 31 March 2001, aged 91.

References

External links

* * 1909 births 2001 deaths People from Watford British cosmologists British relativity theorists 20th-century British mathematicians Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Alumni of Merton College, Oxford Alumni of the University of Edinburgh People educated at Watford Grammar School for Boys Fellows of the Royal Society {{UK-mathematician-stub