Clive W. Kilmister
Clive William Kilmister was a British mathematician who specialised in the mathematical foundations of physics, especially quantum mechanics and relativity.
Kilmister attended Queen Mary College London for both his under- and postgraduate degrees. Whilst an undergraduate he was friends with Frank W. J. Olver. In a 1988 Gresham Coillege lecture, he recounted how the two of them would shout requests to formulas to one another in order to prepare for their final exams. Kilmister regarded Olver as a better mathematician than himself, but suggests that had Olver not caught a bout of flu, then Olver would surely of one the schjolarship which launched Kilmister's subsequent career. His 1950 PhD on The Use of Quaternions in Wave-Tensor Calculus related to Arthur Eddington's work, and was supervised by cosmologist George C. McVittie, who was one of Eddington's students. His own students included Brian Tupper, Samuel Edgar, and Tony Crilly.
Kilmister was elected as a member of the London Mathematical Society during his doctoral studies. Upon graduation, he began his career as an Assistant Lecturer in the Mathematics Department of King's College in 1950. The entirety of his academic career was spent at King's. In 1954, Kilmister founded the King's Gravitational Theory Group, in concert with Hermann Bondi and Felix Pirani, which focused on Einstein's theory of general relativity. At retirement, Kilmister was both a Professor of Mathematics and Head of the King's College Mathematics Department.
Honors, positions, and titles
- Member, London Mathematical Society, 1949–2010
- President, British Society for the History of Mathematics, 1974–76
- President, British Society for the Philosophy of Science, 1981–82
- President, Mathematical Association, 1979–1980
- Gresham Professor of Geometry, 1972–1988
- Committee Member, International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation, 1971–1974
- Founding Member, Alternative Natural Philosophy Association
Publications (arranged by year of publication)
- "Eddington's Statistical Theory "
- "Hamiltonian Dynamics"
- "The Environment in Modern Physics: A Study in Relativistic Mechanics"
- "Men of Physics: Sir Arthur Eddington"
- "Rational Mechanics"
- Language, Logic, and Mathematics
- Exploring University Mathematics 2: Lectures Given at Bedford College.
- Nature of the Universe
- General Theory of Relativity
- Relativistic Mechanics, Time and Inertia
- Disequilibrium and Self-Organisation
- "Russell
- Radiation from Relativistic Electrons
- Special Relativity for Physicists
- Schrödinger: Centenary Celebration of a Polymath
- Combinatorial Physics
- Lagrangian Dynamics: An Introduction for Students
- "Special Theory of Relativity"
- Eddington's Search for a Fundamental Theory: A Key to the Universe
- ''The Origin of Discrete Particles ''