English mathematician
Raymond Edward Alan Christopher Paley (7 January 1907 – 7 April 1933) was an English mathematician who made significant contributions to mathematical analysis before dying young in a skiing accident.
Life.
Paley was born in Bournemouth, England, the son of an artillery officer who died of tuberculosis before Paley was born. He was educated at Eton College as a King's Scholar and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He became a wrangler in 1928, and with J. A. Todd, he was one of two winners of the 1930 Smith's Prize examination.
He was elected a Research Fellow of Trinity College in 1930, edging out Todd for the position, and continued at Cambridge as a postgraduate student, advised by John Edensor Littlewood. After the 1931 return of G. H. Hardy to Cambridge he participated in weekly joint seminars with the other students of Hardy and Littlewood. He traveled to the US in 1932 to work with Norbert Wiener at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and with George Pólya at Princeton University, and as part of the same trip also planned to work with Lipót Fejér at a seminar in Chicago organized as part of the Century of Progress exposition.
He was killed on 7 April 1933 in a skiing trip to the Canadian Rockies, by an avalanche on Deception Pass. ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;Paley, born in 1907, was one of the greatest stars in pure mathematics in Britain, whose young genius frightened even Hardy. Had he lived, he might well have turned into another Littlewood: his 26 papers, written mostly in collaboration with Littlewood, Zygmund, Wiener and Ursell, opened new areas in analysis.
Contributions.
Paley's contributions include the following.
Selected publications.
For the short span of his research career, Paley was very productive; Hardy lists 26 of Paley's publications, and more were published posthumously. These publications include:
References.
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