Mathematics at University College, Southampton: Prof. E. T. Davies

Abstract

DR. E. T. DAVIES, WHO has just been appointed to the chair of mathematics at University College, Southampton it of the outstanding leaders of research in modern differential geometry. He graduated at University College of Wales, AtteWVtwyth, in 1925, and was awarded a research stiMentship which took him to Rome to study under Levi-Civita. The next two years he spent working under Cartan at the Sorbonne. His researches in Rome and Paris under two great geometers had a decisive influence on his future work. Since 1930 he has been lecturing at King's College, London, and has been developing a fertile and original field of research which may be generally described as resulting from the action and reaction of differential geometry and the calculus of variations. He has studied problems of deformation of sub-spaces, of 'im bedding', of automorphism, and of the variation of multiple integrals. His later papers give a unified treatment of all geometries having a vector density as element of support, and thus generalize the work of Carton and Finsler. His new appointment, which he takes up at the beginning of 1947, will give him the opportunity to build up a school of research workers in this interesting and important field.