Rollo Davidson
Rollo Davidson (b.
stochastic analysis,[1] and for the Rollo Davidson Prize
, given in his name to early-career probabilists.
Life
At the time of Davidson's birth, his parents lived in The Chantry,
mountain climbing accident in 1970.[1]
Contributions
In stochastic geometry, Davidson is known for introducing the study of line processes, which he modelled as point processes on spaces of parameters of lines.[4] The second winner of the Rollo Davidson Prize, Olav Kallenberg, won the prize for settling (negatively) a conjecture on line processes posed by Davidson in his thesis.[5]
In
stochastic analysis, also, Davidson has been described as a "remarkably original mathematician" who left a legacy of "tantalising unsolved problems".[6] He particularly studied Delphic semigroups, a class of topological semigroups introduced by his advisor to study renewal sequences;[7] Ruzsa & Székely (1988) write that, despite the many applications of these semigroups, Davidson was "the only one to contribute seriously to Delphic theory" after Kendall, and that "his untimely death certainly deprived this theory of interesting developments".[8]
Legacy
In 1975 a fund was established at Churchill College in his memory, endowed initially through the publication in his honour of two volumes[9] of papers, edited by E. F. Harding and D. G. Kendall.[10] A prize from the Rollo Davidson Trust Fund has been awarded annually since 1976 to early-career probabilists.[11]
See also
References
- ^ a b c Rollo Davidson: 1944–1970. Reprinted from Kendall & Harding (1973) pp. 449–452 and Harding & Kendall (1974) pp. 381–384.
- ^ The Chantry: The Later History, Thornbury Roots. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
- ^ Rollo Davidson at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- MR 0474454.
- MR 0451399.
- S2CID 123576712.
- MR 0203767.
- MR 0974112.
- ^ Kendall & Harding (1973); Harding & Kendall (1974)
- ^ Rollo Davidson Trust
- ^ Rollo Davidson Awards 1976 - 2021
Further reading
- Kendall, D. G.; Harding, E. F. (1973), Stochastic Analysis: A tribute to the memory of Rollo Davidson, Wiley Series in Probability and Mathematical Statistics, London-New York-Sydney: John Wiley & Sons, MR 0350791.
- Harding, E. F.; Kendall, D. G. (1974), Stochastic Geometry: A tribute to the memory of Rollo Davidson, Wiley Series in Probability and Mathematical Statistics, London-New York-Sydney: John Wiley & Sons, MR 0350792.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |
