Max Newman

Mth/110
October 11, 2015
Rosemary Hirschfelder

Max Newman
Introduction
The prominent life of Max Newman was an astonishing contribution to the history of mathematics. Newman excelled at an early age in various academics, but most notably his interest in mathematical practices like Boolean algebra, combinatory topology, and mathematical logic. The mathematical practices of Newman revolutionized world history in ways that produced many accomplished understudies after his death. “The work to which Newman contributed, though distinct from that on Enigma, has been described as being of comparable importance” (Groups, 2015). This paper will discuss the early stages of Max Newman’s life, his contributions to mathematics, and accomplishments of his life.
Early Stages of Life
Max Newman was born Maxwell Herman Alexander Neumann February 7, 1987. Max was born in the city of Chelsea, London, United Kingdom. In 1916, Max changed his last name from Neumann to Newman for a contemporary fit. Max’s father was Herman Alexander Neumann, and his mother was Sarah Ann-Pike. His father was a secretary originally born Jewish from Germany, who immigrated to the United Kingdom. His mother was a British schoolteacher. In 1914, Max's father was reverted to Germany because of his German descent and WWI. In 1934, Newman married wife Lyn Lloyd Irvine. Lyn was a writer in which her and Max had two kids. Their kids were named Edward and William. During the time of WWII, Max’s German background caused his wife and two kids to flee to America. Lyn and the two boys remained there for three years. Newman’s wife died in 1973. Max attended his first school that was an elementary school named Goodrich Road in the city of London. At an early age, Max showed an interest in math, chess and piano. He later graduated first class in Part I of the Mathematical Tripos. After that, he earned a scholarship to study math at St John College. Newman also attended the Cambridge University of Manchester and had a minor stint at Princeton University.
Newman’s Contributions
Max was originally drafted by the military in WWI during his studies at St John College. He claimed conscientious objection because of his beliefs which allowed Newman not to participate in actual combat. Eventually, he returned to complete his studies at St John College. In 1942, Max was invited back to work with the British government in WWII and granted a section at Bletchley Park, which was the British’s Government Code and Cipher School. His father’s German background caused him to have a limited role on certain projects. Initially, he was asked to work on the Enigma project but insisted on working with the Tunny project instead where he found a passion for mechanical codebreaking.
In Newman’s time of service, he generated contributions to the Tunny, Colossus, Enigma, and Heath Robinson projects. The Tunny was a German teleprinter cipher machine. Colossus was the world’s first programmable computer designed to replace its successor the Heath Robinson because of its speed and accuracy. Enigma was a cipher machine used to unravel encrypted messages by the Germans. The Heath Robinson was another codebreaking machine. Max became famous for his work in mathematical codebreaking. In 1935, Newman was elected to teach a class on the fundamentals of mathematics at Cambridge University. Newman’s work on machine computing caught the attention of Alan Turing a year later. Alan Turing was the British mathematician responsible for decrypting the German cipher machine Enigma thus leading to the end of WWII. Turing was Newman’s scholar embracing the teachings of math logic at Cambridge. In 1937, he was invited to work at Princeton in which he did for six months.
Accomplishments
Newman was awarded the De Morgan Medal by London Mathematical Society, and the Sylvester Medal, as Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1945 after the war, Newman was appointed the head of Mathematics Fielden Chair, Victory University of Mathematics. By this time, Newman proved Newman’s Lemma. “Newman’s Lemma states that a graph is confluent if it is locally confluent and has no infinite paths” (CiteSeer, 2015). In 1962, Newman was invited to the International Congress of Mathematicians to prove Generalized Poincare Conjecture for topological manifolds. According to Mathworld (2015), in its original form, the Poincare conjecture states that every simply connected closed three-manifold is homeomorphic to the three-sphere (in a topologist’s sense), where a three-sphere is simply a generalization of the usual sphere to one dimension higher. His proven work encouraged him to write a book titled Elements of Topology of Plane Sets of Points.
Inspired Work. After his work at Bletchley Park, he was awarded the Newmanry award. Newman was later offered an advanced position at the University of Manchester which allowed him to establish the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory. Newman created a team to facilitate this operation, so he brought in Frederic Williams and Thomas Kilburn. A short time later the team built the first electronic stored-programmable digital computer. The origin of the design idea was from Alan Turing in 1946. Their close work with Newman during the Tunny project gave them the knowledge to build the computer and named it Baby. An utterance from Williams stated, “now let’s be clear before we go any further that neither Tom Kilburn nor I knew the first thing about computers when we arrived at Manchester University…Newman explained the whole business of how a computer works to us” (Wikipedia, 2015). In 1948, Alan Turing was brought aboard Newman's team to become Deputy Director at the University of Manchester. Turing, Kilburn, and Williams together designed a better version of Baby called Ferranti Mark I. Ferranti Mark I was the first mass-produced computer to hit the market.
Later Years. Newman retired in 1964 to Comberton, Cambridge, United Kingdom. Even though he was retired, Newman continued some of his mathematical work in combinatorial topology. At this time, he was able to prove work on the Poincare Conjecture. Not long after the passing of his wife, Newman remarries his late friend’s widow Margaret Penrose. Newman was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1982. Max dies two years later on February 22, 1984, near the city in which he was born, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Conclusion
The prominent life of Max Newman was an astonishing contribution to the history of mathematics. Newman excelled in various academics, but most notably his interest in mathematical practices like Boolean algebra, combinatory topology, and mathematical logic. The mathematical practices of Newman revolutionized world history in ways that produced many accomplished understudies after his death. “The work to which Newman contributed, though distinct from that on Enigma, has been described as being of comparable importance” (Groups, 2015). This paper has discussed the early stages of Max Newman’s life, his contributions to mathematics, and accomplishments of his life. References
Groups (2015). Maxwell Herman Alexander Newman. Retrieved October 8, 2015, from http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Newman.html, CiteSeer (2015). Newman’s Lemma. Retrieved October 9, 2015, from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.63.8200
Wolfram Mathworld (2015). Poincare Conjecture. Retrieved October 9, 2015, from http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PoincareConjecture.html
Wikipedia (2015). Max Newman. Retrieved October 7, 2015, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Newman,