Person: Routledge, Norman Arthur
Norman Routledge was an English mathematician and schoolteacher. He was a personal friend of Alan Turing.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- The plan was put into operation in September 1939, just when Norman would have been starting school.
- Routledge performed well in most of his school subjects but his weakest one was English literature, something that he blamed on poor teaching.
- Routledge's parents took the headmaster's advice and Routledge specialised in mathematics and physics.
- Although he only stayed for a short time before leaving the school to become a university lecturer, Braithwaite had a large influence on Routledge.
- Braithwaite arranged for Routledge to sit the Cambridge scholarship examinations in mathematics.
- In 1946 Routledge matriculated at King's College, Cambridge, having won a scholarship.
- It was a style that Routledge liked.
- Philip Hall taught in the rooms that Maynard Keynes had occupied and Routledge went to his rooms once a week for a supervision session.
- Unlike Ingham, Routledge said, Hall was a shy man but happy to talk about a whole range of topics other than mathematics.
- Among Routledge's friends was Alan Turing, who had returned to Cambridge after the war to attend physiology courses.
- As well as studying mathematics, Routledge kept up his interest in music while at Cambridge.
- Routledge was awarded a Ph.D. in 1954 for his thesis Recursive Sets.
- Routledge realised that this would mean a vacancy for a well qualified mathematician at Eton so he made some enquiries and got permission from King's College to go to Eton and discuss the possibility of taking up the position with the headmaster.
- One might reasonably ask why Routledge would be so interested in this position which many might consider of lesser status than a university teacher.
- Philip Hall, who was Routledge's friend and advisor, had told him that if he wanted to stay at Cambridge he had to become the acknowledged expert on a particular topic.
- Routledge was deputy leader of the UK Mathematical Olympiad team when they competed in Yugoslavia in 1967 and team leader when the UK Mathematical Olympiad team competed in the USSR in the following year.
- Routledge would produce House plays, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor, involving every boy in the House, even those of the most dire ham-actor tendency.
- One of his pupils, the present Earl of Wemyss, thanked Routledge for broadening the minds of generations of Etonians.
Born 7 March 1928, London, England. Died 27 April 2013, London, England.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin England
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
