Leopold Alexander "Alan" Pars (2 January 1896 – 28 January 1985) was a British applied mathematician. He is most remembered for his textbooks ''Introduction to dynamics'' (1953), ''Calculus of variations'' (1962), and his monumental 650 page ''Treatise on analytical dynamics'' (1965). He was the son of an accountant, and grew up in

Shepherd's Bush Shepherd's Bush is a suburb of West London, England, within the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham west of Charing Cross, and identified as a major metropolitan centre in the London Plan. Although primarily residential in character, its ...

with his two siblings. He was educated at

Hammersmith Hammersmith is a district of West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. It ...

, where he excelled at mathematics and track-and-field. He won a Foundation Scholarship in Mathematics and Physics to study at Jesus College,

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

. He matriculated in 1915, and would spend the rest of his adult life there. Due to serious health problems, he was unable to take the first-year exam (

Mathematical Tripos The Mathematical Tripos is the mathematics course that is taught in the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Cambridge, Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Origin In its classical nineteenth-century form, the tripos was a di ...

) until late 1917. Between frequent bouts of ill-health, he was a popular actor and maintained a vigorous fitness routine, gaining a reputation for

mountaineering Mountaineering, mountain climbing, or alpinism is a set of outdoor activities that involves ascending mountains. Mountaineering-related activities include traditional outdoor climbing, skiing, and traversing via ferratas that have become mounta ...

and winning the multi-university mile race. In 1921, shortly after finishing his M.Sc., he wrote a two-part essay on

tensor field In mathematics and physics, a tensor field is a function assigning a tensor to each point of a region of a mathematical space (typically a Euclidean space or manifold) or of the physical space. Tensor fields are used in differential geometry, ...

geometry as applied to Einstein's recent theory of

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

(1915) which 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 ...

, and led almost immediately to a fellowship at Jesus College where he remained as a lifelong bachelor for the next 61 years. He dedicated himself primarily to teaching, becoming "a teacher and lecturer of great skill and clarity whose range ... was beyond the reach of most of his younger colleagues in the faculty." He also had multiple long-term administrative positions, and had relatively few publications during this phase of his career; it wasn't until retiring from his most demanding teaching and administration assignments that he published his three major books. He retired as president of Jesus College in 1964, but remained "a familiar sight in Cambridge, taking his regular afternoon constitutional... a great Cambridge character, a survivor of an era which is passing from living memory" until his death in 1985.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pars, Leopold British mathematicians 1896 births 1985 deaths