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layout: person nodeid: bookofproofs$Nash-Williams categories: history,20th-century parentid: bookofproofs$604 tags: origin-wales orderid: 1932 title: Nash-Williams, Crispin born: 1932 died: 2001 keywords: crispin nash-williams,nash-williams description: Crispin Nash-Williams was a Welsh mathematician who worked in discrete mathematics, especially graph theory. references: bookofproofs$6909 contributors: @J-J-O'Connor,@E-F-Robertson,bookofproofs

Nash-Williams.jpg

Crispin Nash-Williams was a Welsh mathematician who worked in discrete mathematics, especially graph theory.

Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):

  • The war was coming to an end in 1945 when Nash-Williams left Christ Church Cathedral School in Oxford and entered Rugby School.
  • During his first year at Cambridge Nash-Williams spent a considerable amount of time with the boat club and was cox of a Trinity Hall boat.
  • After graduating, Nash-Williams remained at Cambridge where he undertook research under Shaun Wylie and Davis Rees.
  • Norman Steenrod was a considerable influence on Nash-Williams during this year.
  • When he returned to the UK, Nash-Williams was appointed as Assistant Lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Aberdeen in October 1957.
  • In the first of these papers Nash-Williams considered an infinite chessboard in aaa-dimensional space for some cardinal number aaa.
  • In the second of these two papers Nash-Williams considers a recurrent graph, namely one in which if you start at any vertex and move at random to an adjacent vertex then you will return eventually to the starting vertex with probability 1.
  • In the paper Nash-Williams characterises infinite recurrent graphs.
  • Nash-Williams' doctoral thesis Decomposition of graphs into infinite chains was submitted to Cambridge University in 1958 and the degree was awarded in the following year.
  • At Aberdeen Nash-Williams was promoted to Senior Lecturer in Mathematics in 1964 then visited the University of Waterloo in Canada as a Visiting Professor in the following year.
  • The Department of Combinatorics was established at Waterloo in 1967 and Nash-Williams left Aberdeen to become one of the founding professors.
  • Shortly after the 1975 conference Nash-Williams moved to Reading where he was appointed to the chair of mathematics following Richard Rado retirement.
  • This survey was based on lectures which Nash-Williams gave at the Edinburgh Mathematical Colloquium held in St Andrews in 1980.
  • Nash-Williams did not enjoy administration and in particular being Head of department at Reading was a chore which he did for six years out of a sense of duty rather than for any other reason.

Born 19 December 1932, Cardiff, Wales. Died 20 January 2001, Ascot, England.

View full biography at MacTutor