Person: Kennedy, Patrick Brendan
Patrick Brendan Kennedy was an Irish mathematician who worked in complex analysis. As a young man he was an outstanding chess player.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- In 1937 when Paddy was eight years old, after a year in Ballylongford, he did manage to achieve the transfer to Cork and, in 1941, Paddy entered the North Monastery secondary school in Cork.
- In 1946, while at the North Monastery School, Kennedy won the Honan Scholarship to University College Cork.
- Kennedy entered University College Cork in 1946 aiming at a science degree.
- In the year he graduated, Kennedy took part in the Irish Chess Championship which was held in Galway.
- Kennedy won each of the 7 rounds achieving the maximum score of 7/7.
- After graduating with a B.Sc. from Cork, Kennedy continued to study there for his Master's Degree.
- In 1951 Kennedy completed his M.Sc. studies and was examined by Vicenzo Consolato Antonino Ferraro (1902-1974) who, at that time, was professor of applied mathematics at the University College of the South West at Exeter (now the University of Exeter).
- Ferraro was particularly impressed by Kennedy's work in analysis and recommended that he study for a Ph.D. with Walter Hayman at Exeter.
- Kennedy was awarded an M.Sc. with First Class Honours from the National University of Ireland, and was awarded the Travelling Studentship in Mathematical Sciences of the National University of Ireland.
- Hayman had been appointed as a Lecturer in Mathematics at Exeter in 1947 and Kennedy became his first research student.
- Paddy was a wonderful conversationalist and tremendous good company.
- Kennedy's first paper was On a conjecture of Heins which he submitted to the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society on 12 September 1953.
- Kennedy promises a further paper giving an example of a class of integral functions which shows these positive results are best possible and provides a counter-example to Heins' conjecture.
- Kennedy was appointed as an assistant lecturer in mathematics at Aberystwyth in autumn 1953.
- Some of Kennedy's papers listed below also acknowledge the same source of support.
- Paddy Barry was a research student at Cork advised by Kennedy.
- Kennedy was appointed Professor of Mathematics at Cork in 1956.
- Kennedy was the first professor of mathematics, appointed before the university opened.
- In 1965 Kennedy was appointed as External Examiner in Mathematics for the National University of Ireland.
- On the night of 8 June 1966, Kennedy took his own life in a hotel in Nottingham.
- We should say a little more about Kennedy's chess career.
- At the time of his death Kennedy was writing a book on the applications of subharmonic functions to function theory.
Born 20 July 1929, Clarecastle, County Clare, Ireland. Died 8 June 1966, Nottingham, England.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Ireland
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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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
