Person: Synge, John Lighton
John Synge was an Irish mathematician whose most important contributions were to theoretical physics. He wrote over 400 papers and 11 books.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- After being educated at St Andrews College in Dublin, Synge entered Trinity College, Dublin in 1915.
- After graduating, Synge was appointed to a lectureship in mathematics at Trinity College, but he only held the post for a short time, leaving for Canada in 1920.
- from 1920 to 1925 Synge was an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Toronto.
- In 1930 Synge headed back to North America and again was appointed to the University of Toronto, this time as Professor of Applied Mathematics.
- In 1943 Synge was appointed as Chairman of the Mathematics Department of Ohio State University, then, three years later, as Head of the Mathematics Department of the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburg.
- Synge retired in 1972 and during his time at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies about 12% of all workers in relativity theory studied there.
- During his long scientific career, Synge published over 200 papers and 11 books.
- Synge's skill at communication was not only a gift that he had for writing, but also a gift in lecturing.
- Those who were fortunate enough to have attended Synge lectures say that he combined all three.
- Synge received many honours for his work.
- As to hobbies, Synge was a keen cyclist, was passionately interested in sailing and painted some very fine compositions.
- Secondly there was Richard Laurence Millington Synge (1914-1994), Nobel laureate for Chemistry in 1952, who shared the Prize for Chemistry with A J P Martin for their development of partition chromatography, a method used to separate mixtures of closely related chemicals such as amino acids for identification.
Born 23 March 1897, Dublin, Ireland. Died 30 March 1995, Dublin, Ireland.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Ireland
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
