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Peter SWINNERTON-DYER

 

 Sir Henry Peter Francis Swinnerton-Dyer, 16º baronetto, Cavaliere Comandante dell'Ordine dell'Impero Britannico è nato il 2 agosto del 1927 a Ponteland ed è stato un insigne matematico inglese che ha avuto grande influenza nella geometria diofantea.

 Professore Emerito al Trinity College, al  St Catharine's College ed al Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics dell'Università di Cambridge, è particolarmente per la congettura elaborata negli anni '60 assieme a Byran Birch.

 Negli anni della sua gioventù è stato anche un giocatore di rilevanza nazionale che ha rappresentato due volte la Gran Bretagna ai Campionati Europei a Squadre, vincendo la medaglia d'argento nel 1953 giocando in coppia con Dimmie Fleming (unica donna medagliata con la squadra open Britannica) ed arrivando quarto in quelli di Beirut nel 1963.

Sposato con l'archeologa Harriet Crawford, è scomparso il 26 dicembre del 2018 a Cambridge.

Sir Henry Peter Francis Swinnerton-Dyer, 16th Baronet KBE FRS (b. 2 August 1927 in Ponteland), commonly known as Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, is an English mathematician specialising in number theory at University of Cambridge that have been big influence in Diophantine geometry.

 As a mathematician he is best known for his part in the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture relating algebraic properties of elliptic curves to special values of L-functions.

This was developed with Bryan Birch during the first half of the 1960s, with the help of machine computation.

Swinnerton-Dyer is the son of Sir Leonard Schroeder Swinnerton Dyer, 15th Baronet, and his wife Barbara, daughter of Hereward Brackenbury. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Master of St Catharine's College and vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge from 1979 to 1983.

From 1983 he was Chairman of the University Grants Committee and then from 1989, Chief Executive of the Universities Funding Council. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1967 and was a KBE in 1987. In 2006 he was awarded the Sylvester Medal.

Swinnerton-Dyer was, in his younger days, an international bridge player, representing the British team twice in the European Open teams championship.

In 1953 at Helsinki he was partnered by Dimmie Fleming (the only occasion a woman has played in the British Open team): the team came second out of fifteen teams.

In 1962 he was partnered by Ken Barbour; the team came fourth out of twelve teams at Beirut.

Married the archeologist Harriet Crawford he disappeared on 2018, 26 December.

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