Alfred Young (mathematician) facts for kids
Alfred Young (born April 16, 1873 – died December 15, 1940) was an important British mathematician. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society, which is a big honor for scientists.
He was born in a town called Widnes, Lancashire, in England. He went to school at Monkton Combe School and then studied at Clare College, Cambridge. He finished his studies in 1895.
What He's Known For
Alfred Young is best known for his work in a part of mathematics called group theory. He came up with two important ideas in 1900:
- Young diagrams
- Young tableaux
These tools are still used by mathematicians today to solve problems in group theory and other areas.
His Life and Career
Young started working as a lecturer at Selwyn College, Cambridge, in 1901. Later, in 1905, he moved to Clare College. In 1902, he wrote a book called The Algebra of Invariants with another mathematician, John Hilton Grace.
In 1907, he married Edith Clara Wilson. A year later, in 1908, he became a clergyman, which is like a priest. In 1910, he became the parish priest in a village called Birdbrook in Essex. This village was about 25 miles east of Cambridge. He lived there for the rest of his life.
Even though he was a clergyman, he kept working on mathematics. Many of his important papers about invariant theory and the symmetric group were written during this time. In 1926, he started lecturing at Cambridge again, even while living in Birdbrook.
His Impact on Science
Alfred Young's ideas have had a big effect on many different areas of science and math. His work helped improve:
- Group representation theory: This is about understanding how groups of numbers or objects behave.
- Combinatorics and statistics: These fields deal with counting, arranging, and analyzing data.
- Invariant theory: This is about finding properties that don't change even when other things do.
- Physics and chemistry: His mathematical ideas have even been useful in understanding how the world works at a very small level.
His discoveries often connected these different topics, showing how one idea could be important in many fields.
See also
- Hyperoctahedral group
- Young's lattice
- Young–Fibonacci lattice
- Young symmetrizer
- Representation theory of the symmetric group
