Professor Joseph Langley Burchnall (8 December 1892 – 29 April 1975) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

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 ...

who introduced the Burchnall–Chaundy theory.

Life

Burchnall was born in

Whichford Whichford is a village and civil parish in Warwickshire, England, about southeast of Shipston-on-Stour. The parish adjoins the county boundary with Oxfordshire and the village is about north of the Oxfordshire town of Chipping Norton. The pa ...

Warwickshire Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Staffordshire and Leicestershire to the north, Northamptonshire to the east, Ox ...

, the son of Walter Henry Burchnall, a schoolmaster, and Ann Newport. He was the eldest of six children. Around 1900 the family moved to Butterwick, and thereafter Joseph was educated at

Boston Grammar School The Boston Grammar School is an 11–18 boys selective grammar school and sixth form college located in Boston, Lincolnshire, England. By October 2021, a total of 812 pupils attending the school, 201 of which were in the sixth form provision ...

, then progressed to

Christ Church, Oxford Christ Church (, the temple or house, ''wikt:aedes, ædes'', of Christ, and thus sometimes known as "The House") is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1546 by Henry V ...

graduating BA in 1914 and MA (in absentia) in 1915. He had a distinguished military history during the First World War winning the Military Cross in 1918 whilst serving in the Royal Garrison Artillery. He was wounded three times and lost a leg in March 1918. After the war he joined Durham University as a Reader in Mathematics then progressed to be a Lecturer. He became a professor in 1939 and continued this until retirement in 1959. He wrote many mathematical papers in conjunction with Theodore William Chaundy. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1953. He was appointed an OBE in 1956 for services to education and the community. He was President of the Old Bostonian Association (his old school alumni) from 1967 to 1969. He died on 29 April 1975 in Southwold, Suffolk. He is buried in St Edmunds Church Cemetery in Southwold.

Family

He married Gertrude Frances Rollinson in 1917. They had two sons and one daughter.

References

* 1892 births 1975 deaths 20th-century English mathematicians People educated at Boston Grammar School Military personnel from Warwickshire British Army personnel of World War I Recipients of the Military Cross Royal Field Artillery officers English amputees Academics of Durham University Officers of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh People from Warwickshire People from the Borough of Boston Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford People from Southwold British scientists with disabilities {{UK-mathematician-stub