Person: Shepherdson, John Cedric
John Shepherdson was a English mathematician who worked in ring theory and mathematical logic.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- He would have remained at Cambridge had he been awarded a fellowship to Trinity College but he was in competition with the outstanding mathematician Peter Swinnerton-Dyer who was awarded the Fellowship in preference to Shepherdson.
- Heilbronn, who was a number theorist, had the opportunity of appointing an Assistant Lecturer and, despite the fact that Shepherdson had no doctorate, nevertheless his outstanding record at Cambridge led to Heilbronn offering the position to him.
- Shepherdson accepted and spent the rest of his career at the University of Bristol.
- David Shepherdson became a zoologist.
- Jane Shepherdson was educated at Clifton High School, and became a leading businesswoman with clothing firms.
- Let us return to our account of Shepherdson's career.
- Shepherdson's first publications were On the addition of elements of a sequence (1947) and Inverses and zero divisors in matrix rings (1951).
- Also in 1955 he published, jointly with John Myhill, Effective operations on partial recursive functions.
- This paper contained an idea similar to a Turing machine, now known as the Shepherdson-Sturgis Register machine.
- Shepherdson proposed the setting up of the British Logic Colloquium in 1970, and then became a co-founder of the Colloquium with Robin Gandy.
- Shepherdson died of an inoperable sarcoma and, following his wishes, there was no funeral service but a Memorial Service celebrating his life was held at Goldney Hall in Bristol on Saturday 21 February 2015.
- As Shepherdson had requested, the service was led by an officiant from the British Humanist Society.
Born 7 June 1926, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England. Died 8 January 2015, Bristol, 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
