Duncan Sommerville

Duncan Sommerville FRSE
Born	24 November, 1879 Beawar, Rajputana, India
Died	31 January, 1934 Wellington, New Zealand
Nationality	Scottish
Citizenship	United Kingdom
Education	Perth Academy
Alma mater	St Andrews University
Occupation	Mathematician
Employer	Lecturer in Mathematics, St Andrews University (1905-15) Professor of Pure & Applied Mathematics, Wellington University (1915-34)
Known for	Work in multidimensional geometry
Religion	United Presbyterian Church of Scotland
Spouse	Louisa Agnes Beveridge (m. 1912)
Parents	Rev Dr James Sommerville
Notes Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1911) Co-founder and first secretary of the New Zealand Astronomical Society (1920) President of Section A of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, Adelaide (1924) Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (1926)

Duncan MacLaren Young Sommerville FRSE FRAS (1879–1934) was a Scottish mathematician and astronomer, best known for his work in multidimensional geometry. He was a co-founder and the first secretary of the New Zealand Astronomical Society.

Sommerville was also an accomplished watercolourist, producing a series of works of the New Zealand landscape.

The middle name 'MacLaren' is spelt úsing the old orthography M'Laren in some sources, for example the records of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.^[1]

Early life

Sommerville was born in India where his father was employed as a missionary doctor by the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Rev Dr James Sommerville had been responsible for establishing the hospital at Jodhpur, Rajputana.

The family returned home to Scotland, where Duncan first spent 4 years at a private school in Perth, before being sent to Perth Academy. He then studied at the University of St Andrews in Fife. He taught there from 1902 to 1914.

Sommerville was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1911.

Work in New Zealand

Duncan MacLaren Young Sommerville

In 1915 Sommerville went to New Zealand to take up the Chair of Pure and Applied Mathematics at the Victoria College of Wellington.

Sommerville most famous for his work on geometries in higher dimensions (in addition the classical geometries: Euclidean, spherical and hyperbolic). He found 3^d geometries in dimension d.

He also discovered and proved the celebrated Dehn-Sommerville equations for the number of faces of convex polytopes.

References

1. ^ Waterston, Charles D; Macmillan Shearer, A (July 2006). Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783-2002: Biographical Index. II. Edinburgh: The Royal Society of Edinburgh. ISBN 9780902198845. http://www.rse.org.uk/fellowship/fells_indexp2.pdf. Retrieved 5 February, 2011. 

• D. M. Y. Sommerville, Bibliography of Non-Euclidean Geometry. St Andrews, 1911.
• D. M. Y. Sommerville, The Elements of Non-Euclidean Geometry (Bell's Mathematical Series for Schools and Colleges.) Ed. William P. Paine. G.Bell, 1914, 274pp
• D. M. Y. Sommerville, An Introduction to the Geometry of n Dimensions. New York, E. P. Dutton, 1930. 196 pp. (Dover Publications edition, 1958)
• D. M. Y. Sommerville, Analytical Geometry of Three Dimensions. Cambridge University Press., 1934. 416pp

External links

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Duncan Sommerville", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Sommerville.html .
• Obituary, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 95, p. 330-331.
• Mathematics At Victoria In Retrospect - Notes for a talk to the Mathematics and Physics Society on 22 May 1974 by C J Seelye.

Persondata
Name	Sommerville, Duncan M. Y.
Alternative names
Short description	Scottish mathematician
Date of birth	November 24, 1879
Place of birth	Beawar, Rajputana, India
Date of death	January 31, 1934
Place of death	Wellington, New Zealand