J. S. R. (Roy) Chisholm (26 November 1926 – 10 August 2015) was an English

mathematical physicist Mathematical physics is the development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the development of ...

. He was Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics at the

University of Kent The University of Kent (formerly the University of Kent at Canterbury, abbreviated as UKC) is a Collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom. The university was granted its roya ...

Canterbury Canterbury (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, in the county of Kent, England; it was a county borough until 1974. It lies on the River Stour, Kent, River Stour. The city has a mild oceanic climat ...

, where he worked from its founding in 1965 until 1994. Before that he held positions at the

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

(1951-1954) and Cardiff (1954-1962) following which he was appointed Dublin University Professor of Natural Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin (1962-1966). He held BA (1948) and PhD (1952) degrees from Cambridge. Chisholm developed a method for rational approximations of two variable functions generalising

Padé approximant In mathematics, a Padé approximant is the "best" approximation of a function near a specific point by a rational function of given order. Under this technique, the approximant's power series agrees with the power series of the function it is ap ...

. Roy Chisholm initiated the first International Conference on Clifford Algebras and Their Applications in Mathematical Physics (ICCA) conference in 1985 which took place at the

in Canterbury, United Kingdom, and which has happened triennially since then. He was married to Monty Chisholm, author of a book on English literary figure wife

Lucy Clifford Lucy Clifford (2 August 1846 – 21 April 1929), better known as Mrs. W. K. Clifford, was an English novelist, playwright and journalist. Biography Lucy Clifford was born Lucy Lane in London, the daughter of John Lane of Barbados. She married ...

and mathematician husband

William Kingdon Clifford William Kingdon Clifford (4 May 18453 March 1879) was a British mathematician and philosopher. Building on the work of Hermann Grassmann, he introduced what is now termed geometric algebra, a special case of the Clifford algebra named in his ...

Books

*''An Introduction to Statistical Mechanics'', with A.H.de Borde, Pergamon Press (1958) *''Mathematical Methods in Physics'', with Rosa Morris, North-Holland (1964) *'' Vectors in Three-Dimensional Space'' (Cambridge University Press,1978) *''Clifford Algebras and Their Applications in Mathematical Physics'', co-edited with A.K.Common (Reidel 1986) *''Clifford Analysis and its Applications'', co-eds F.Brackx & V.Soucek (Kluwer 2001) *Changing Stations, a Campus Drama (Moat Sole 2014)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chisholm, John Steven Roy 1926 births 2015 deaths English mathematicians Academics of the University of Kent Alumni of Christ's College, Cambridge