Victor Percy Snaith, 1944–2021

Abstract

AbstractVictor Snaith was born in Colchester, Essex, on 15 March 1944 and passed away in Bristol on 3 July 2021 at the age of 77. He completed his PhD at the University of Warwick in 1969 under the supervision of Luke Hodgkin. He held faculty positions in Canada, at the University of Western Ontario (1976–88) and McMaster University (1988–98), and became a leading figure in the Canadian mathematical research community during that time. He was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1984, and held the first Britton Professorship at McMaster University. He returned to the United Kingdom in 1998, to professorships at the University of Southampton (1998–2004) and the University of Sheffield (2004–2009) from where he retired in 2009. He was an active member of the Heilbronn Institute from 2006 until the time of his passing. Snaith made significant research contributions in various areas, including the Snaith splitting theorem in stable homotopy theory, the introduction of the Bott periodic form of algebraic K‐theory, and the explicit Brauer induction theorem with its applications in algebraic number theory. He is survived by his wife Carolyn, son Dan, and daughters Anna and Nina.