Person: Pedoe, Daniel
Dan Pedoe was an English-born mathematician and geometer.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Up to the age of eleven Pedoe attended the local primary school.
- When Pedoe studied there it was selective, only accepting boys with good academic standards, and was fee paying.
- Soon after beginning his secondary education his name was changed from Cohen to Pedoe.
- His seniors knew his origin, but by changing his name from Abraham Cohen to Arthur Pedoe he avoided any awkward confrontation.
- Pedoe matriculated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1930.
- The mathematics master at Winchester, Clement Vavasor Durell, wrote to the University of Southampton asking if they had any members of staff who could help them out and Pedoe, being the most junior member of Southampton's Mathematics department, was asked to go to Winchester on one day each week to teach there.
- In 1941 Pedoe began his collaboration with William Hodge on the famous three volume book Methods of algebraic geometry.
- In 1942 three further papers by Pedoe appeared: A remark on a property of a special pencil of quadrics; On some geometrical inequalities; and An inequality for two triangles.
- He suggested to Pedoe that he should contribute to the war effort and Pedoe was enlisted to work part-time on the improvement of piston rings.
- In 1947 Pedoe moved to Westfield College, part of the University of London, where he became a reader in mathematics.
- Pedoe spent the next seven years in Khartoum.
- The retirement age in Singapore was 55 so, after a few years, Pedoe realised that he was approaching that age yet had no wish to retire.
- Pedoe continued to work at the University of Minnesota until he retired in 1981.
- We mentioned above that Pedoe taught Freeman Dyson at Winchester College.
- Forty years later, Pedoe discovered 'sangaku'.
- Pedoe was the only one of the six who answered.
- Among the honours that Pedoe received we mention the Senior Fulbright Fellowship he was awarded which enabled him to visit Australia and the Mathematical Association of America's Lester Ford Award which he received in 1968.
- Finally let us say a little about Pedoe's twin sons Dan Tunstall Pedoe and Hugh Tunstall Pedoe.
Born 29 October 1910, London, England. Died 27 October 1998, St Paul, Minnesota, USA.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin England
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
