Christopher Longuet-Higgins

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Christopher Longuet-Higgins
FRSE
Born
Hugh Christopher Longuet-Higgins

(1923-04-11)11 April 1923
Lenham, Kent, England
Died27 March 2004(2004-03-27) (aged 80)
EducationWinchester College
Alma materUniversity of Oxford (BA, DPhil)
AwardsTilden Prize (1954)
Naylor Prize and Lectureship (1981)
Scientific career
InstitutionsKing's College London
University of Chicago
University of Manchester
University of Cambridge
University of Edinburgh
University of Sussex
ThesisSome problems in theoretical chemistry by the method of molecular orbitals (1947)
Doctoral advisorCharles Coulson
Doctoral students
Other notable studentsRichard Bader[6]

Hugh Christopher Longuet-Higgins

Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Cambridge for 13 years until 1967 when he moved to the University of Edinburgh to work in the developing field of cognitive science. He made many significant contributions to our understanding of molecular science. He was also a gifted amateur musician, both as performer and composer, and was keen to advance the scientific understanding of this art.[8] He was the founding editor of the journal Molecular Physics.[9]

Education and early life

Longuet-Higgins was born on 11 April 1923 at The Vicarage, Lenham, Kent, England, the elder son and second of the three children of Henry Hugh Longuet Longuet-Higgins (1886-1966), vicar of Lenham, and his wife, Albinia Cecil Bazeley.[10] He was educated at The Pilgrims' School, Winchester, and Winchester College. At Winchester College he was one of the "gang of four" consisting of himself, his brother Michael, Freeman Dyson and James Lighthill. In 1941, he won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. He read chemistry, but also took Part I of a degree in Music. He was a Balliol organ scholar.[8] As an undergraduate he proposed the correct bridged structure of the chemical compound diborane (B2H6), whose structure was then unknown and turned out to be different from structures predicted by contemporary valence bond theory. This was published with his tutor, R. P. Bell.[11] He completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1947[12] at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Charles Coulson.[7]

Career and research

After his D.Phil, Longuet-Higgins did

Woodward-Hoffmann rules, and his introduction of nuclear permutation-inversion symmetry groups[16] for the study of molecular symmetry
.

In his later years at Cambridge he became interested in the brain and the new field of

Machine intelligence and perception, with Richard Gregory and Donald Michie
.

In 1974 he moved to the Centre for Research on Perception and Cognition (in the Department of Experimental Psychology) at

Sussex University, Brighton, England. In 1981 he introduced the essential matrix to the computer vision community in a paper which also included the eight-point algorithm
for the estimation of this matrix.

He retired in 1988. Following his retirement he examined the problem of how to automate the process of performing music from a score. This work was never published, but his notebooks were meticulously kept and the research is available for reconstruction. The letters, papers and allied material are archived at the Royal Society.[17] One of his latest publications on music cognition was published in Philosophical Transactions A.[18]

An example of Longuet-Higgins's writings, introducing the field of

music cognition:[18]

Longuet-Higgins (1979):[19] —

You're browsing, let us imagine, in a music shop, and come across a box of faded
Colonel Bogey
".

His work on developing computational models of music understanding was recognized in the nineties by the award of an Honorary Doctorate of Music by the University of Sheffield. At the time of his death (in 2004) he was Professor Emeritus at the University of Sussex.[citation needed]

Honours and awards

Christopher Longuet-Higgins was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) in 1970. He was a Fellow of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science. He had honorary doctorates from the universities of Bristol, Essex, Sheffield, Sussex and York. Among his notable prizes were the Jasper Ridley prize in music from Balliol College, Oxford, the Harrison memorial prize from the Chemical Society, and the Naylor prize from the London Mathematical Society. He was a governor of the BBC
from 1979 to 1984.

In 2005 the

Longuet-Higgins Prize for "Fundamental Contributions in Computer Vision that Have Withstood the Test of Time" was created in his honor. The prize is awarded every year at the IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference for up to two distinguished papers published at that same conference ten years earlier.[citation needed
]

Personal life

Longuet-Higgins died on 27 March 2004, aged 80. Although he respected many of the features of the Church of England, he was an atheist.[21]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Peter Higgs: Curriculum Vitae". The University of Edinburgh. 10 June 2019. Retrieved 6 December 2021.
  2. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.572829. Archived from the original
    on 13 April 2017. Retrieved 12 April 2017.
  3. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.482889. Free access icon
  4. ^ a b c Christopher Longuet-Higgins at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. doi:10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.111967. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  6. ^ "Richard F. W. Bader". Chemical & Engineering News. 26 March 2012.
  7. ^
    doi:10.1098/rsbm.2006.0012
    .
  8. ^ a b c Darwin, Chris (10 June 2004). "Christopher Longuet-Higgins". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 December 2021.
  9. S2CID 220374780
    .
  10. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2006.0012
    .
  11. doi:10.1039/JR9430000250
    .
  12. ^ Longuet-Higgins, Hugh Christopher (1947). Some problems in theoretical chemistry by the method of molecular orbitals. bodleian.ox.ac.uk (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford.
  13. ^ Venn Cambridge University database Archived 14 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  14. S2CID 97141844
    .See page 12
  15. doi:10.1021/ja01087a033
    .
  16. doi:10.1080/00268976300100501
    .
  17. ^ "CLH - Christopher Longuet-Higgins Papers". The Royal Society Collections Catalogues. The Royal Society. Retrieved 6 December 2021. Browse the "Hierarchy of Longuet-Higgins' works".
  18. ^
    S2CID 121844830
    .
  19. S2CID 62062929
    .
  20. OCLC 83595094.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  21. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/93593. By that time Longuet-Higgins had become a convinced atheist, although he still respected many of the features of the Church of England. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
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