John Charles Burkill (1 February 1900 – 6 April 1993) was an English mathematician who worked on analysis and introduced the Burkill integral.

Career

Burkill was born in

Holt, Norfolk Holt is a market town and civil parish in the county of Norfolk, England. The town is north of the city of Norwich, west of Cromer and east of King's Lynn. The town has a population of 3,550, rising and including the ward to 3,810 at the 201 ...

, and educated at St Paul's School and

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...

, where he won the

Smith's Prize Smith's Prize was the name of each of two prizes awarded annually to two research students in mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1769. Following the reorganization in 1998, they are now awarded under the names ...

. He became a research fellow at Trinity in 1922, and two years later was appointed Professor of Pure Mathematics at Liverpool University. In 1929, he returned to Cambridge to take up a position as Reader in Mathematical Analysis, as a fellow not of Trinity but of

Peterhouse Peterhouse is the oldest Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England, founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. Peterhouse has around 300 undergraduate and 175 graduate stud ...

. In 1948, he won the

Adams Prize The Adams Prize is a prize awarded each year by the Faculty of Mathematics at St John's College to a UK-based mathematician for distinguished research in mathematical sciences. The prize is named after the mathematician John Couch Adams and wa ...

, and was 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 1953. He was Master of Peterhouse from 1968 to 1973. His doctoral students included Frederick Gehring.

Private life

In 1928 he married Margareta Braun, who was born in Germany but educated at

Newnham College, Cambridge Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millicen ...

. Her father was German and her mother was Russian. Burkill and his wife had three children of their own, but Margareta arranged for hundreds of refugee children to come to Britain and some joined their household. Two became noted academics. After Margareta's death in 1984 Burkill lived in

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, situated south of Leeds and east of Manchester. The city is the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and some of its so ...

, where his adopted son Harry was based, and died there in 1993.

Selected publications

* ''The Lebesgue Integral'', Cambridge University Press 195
2004 pbk edition
* ''The Theory of ordinary differential equations'', Interscience, Oliver and Boyd 1956 * ''Mathematical Scholarship Problems'', with H. M. Cundy, Cambridge University Press 1961 * ''First course in mathematical analysis'', Cambridge University Press 1962
reprint of 1978 pbk edition
* ''A second course in mathematical analysis'', with Harry Burkill, Cambridge University Press, 1970; 1980 1st pbk edition
2002 pbk edition

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Burkill, John Charles Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Fellows of the Royal Society Masters of Peterhouse, Cambridge 1900 births 1993 deaths 20th-century English mathematicians Presidents of the Cambridge Philosophical Society