E. H. Neville
| Eric Harold Neville. | |
|---|---|
| Born |
1 January 1889 London, England |
| Died | 22 August 1961 (aged 72) Reading, Berkshire, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions |
Trinity College, Cambridge University of Reading |
| Alma mater |
William Ellis School University of Cambridge |
| Known for |
Neville's algorithm Assisting Ramanujan in his passage from India to Cambridge |
| Notable awards | Smith's Prize, 1912 |
Eric Harold Neville, known as E. H. Neville (1 January 1889 London, England – 22 August 1961 Reading, Berkshire, England) was an English mathematician. A heavily fictionalised portrayal of his life is rendered in the 2007 novel The Indian Clerk. He is the one who convinced Srinivasa Ramanujan to come to England.
Eric Harold Neville was born in London on 1 January 1889. He attended the William Ellis School, where his mathematical abilities were recognised and encouraged by his mathematics teacher, T. P. Nunn. In 1907, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated as second wrangler two years later.
While there he became acquainted with other Cambridge fellows, most notably Bertrand Russell and G. H. Hardy.
Neville's principal areas of expertise were geometrical, with differential geometry dominating much of his early work. Early on in his Trinity fellowship, in a dissertation on moving axes, he extended Darboux's method of the moving triad and coefficients of spin by removing the restriction of the orthogonal frame. He published The Fourth Dimension (1921) to develop geometrical methods in four-dimensional space. During his time in Cambridge, he had been greatly influenced by Bertrand Russell's work on the logical foundations of mathematics and in 1922 he published his Prolegomena to Analytical Geometry. It is a detailed treatise on foundations of analytical geometry, including complex geometry, providing an axiomatic development of the subject.
In 1914, as a visiting lecturer, he travelled to India, where, in response to a request from Hardy, he managed to persuade the Indian mathematician Ramanujan to accompany him back to England, thus playing a vital role in the initiation of one of the most celebrated mathematical collaborations of the last hundred years. Ramanujan later befriended Hardy.
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