Allan Joseph Champneys Cunningham (1842–1928) was a British-Indian
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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
.
[A. E. Western, ''J. London Math. Soc.'' 317–318 (1928)]
Biography
Born in
Delhi
Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, but spread chiefly to the west, or beyond its Bank (geography ...
, Cunningham was the son of
Sir Alexander Cunningham, archaeologist and the founder of the
Archaeological Survey of India
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is an Indian government agency that is responsible for archaeological research and the conservation and preservation of cultural historical monuments in the country. It was founded in 1861 by Alexander ...
.
He started a military career with the
East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...
's
Bengal Engineers
The Bengal Engineer Group (BEG) (informally the Bengal Sappers or Bengal Engineers) is a military engineering regiment in the Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army. The unit was originally part of the Bengal Army of the East India Company's Ben ...
at a young age. From 1871 to 1881, he was instructor in mathematics at the
Indian Institute Of Technology Roorkee
The Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT- Roorkee or IIT-R) is a technical university located in Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India. It is the oldest engineering institution in India. It was founded as the College of Civil Engineering in 1847 d ...
(IIT Roorkee). Upon returning to the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
in 1881, he continued teaching at military institutes in
Chatham,
Dublin
Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...
and
Shorncliffe. He left the army in 1891. He spent the rest of his life studying
number theory
Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic functions. Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers (for example ...
. He applied his expertise to finding
factors of large numbers of the form ''a
n'' ± ''b
n'', such as
Mersenne numbers
In mathematics, a Mersenne prime is a prime number that is one less than a power of two. That is, it is a prime number of the form for some integer . They are named after Marin Mersenne, a French Minim friar, who studied them in the early 17th ...
(
) and
Fermat numbers
In mathematics, a Fermat number, named after Pierre de Fermat (1601–1665), the first known to have studied them, is a positive integer of the form:F_ = 2^ + 1, where ''n'' is a non-negative integer. The first few Fermat numbers are: 3, 5, 17 ...
(
) which have ''b'' = 1. His work is continued in the
Cunningham project.
References
External links
*Number Theory Web
Allan Joseph Champneys Cunningham(based on the obituary by A.E. Western).
1842 births
1928 deaths
People from Delhi
British people in colonial India
Mathematicians from British India
19th-century British mathematicians
20th-century British mathematicians
Number theorists
British East India Company Army officers
{{UK-mathematician-stub