Ted Hurley facts for kids
Ted Hurley (born Thaddeus C. Hurley on September 22, 1944) is a smart Irish mathematician. He used to be a professor at a university. He studied special areas of math like algebra, which is about using letters and symbols to solve problems. He also worked on group theory, which looks at how things can be grouped together. His work included cryptography, which is about secret codes, and coding theory, which helps send information without errors.
In 1976, Ted Hurley helped start the Irish Mathematical Society. This is a group for people who love math in Ireland. He was also the first secretary for the society from 1977 to 1979.
Early Life and Learning
Ted Hurley was born and grew up in Tuam, Co. Galway, Ireland. His parents were James Hurley and Bridget Walsh. He went to University College Galway (UCG), which is now called the University of Galway. He earned his first degree (BSc) in mathematical science in 1965. The next year, in 1966, he got his master's degree (MSc) there too.
While at UCG, he won two special awards: the Peel Prize in Geometry and the Sir Joseph Larmor Prize. Later, he went to the University of London in England. He earned his PhD, which is a very high degree, in 1970. His special project for his PhD was about "Representations of Some Relatively Free Groups in Power Series Rings." He worked on this with his teacher, Karl W. Gruenberg.
Ted Hurley's Career in Math
After finishing his studies, Ted Hurley worked at a few different universities. These included Imperial College London, the University of Sheffield, and University College Dublin (UCD).
In 1980, he came back to University College Galway (UCG). This university is now known as the University of Galway. He became a senior lecturer in mathematics there. He was promoted several times, becoming an Associate Professor in 1988 and a full Professor of Mathematics in 1996.
He also led the Department of Mathematics from 1996 to 2001. Then, he was the Head of Discipline within the School of Mathematics from 2001 to 2010.
Ted Hurley also liked to talk about math education in public. He often spoke in Irish newspapers and on national radio shows. He explained why it's so important for everyone to understand numbers and math in their daily lives.
His early math work was mostly about group theory. This part of math looks at how groups of things behave. He also worked on group rings. Later, he became interested in coding theory and cryptography. Coding theory helps make sure messages are sent correctly. Cryptography is about making and breaking secret codes.
Some of his important early work included:
- Improving a famous study by Philip Hall about "Stability Groups."
- Finding a general way to solve "Fox's problem" about identifying special parts in a group ring.
- Creating examples that showed a long-standing math problem, called the "Lie Dimension subgroup conjecture," was not always true.
His work on group rings also led to new ideas in coding theory and cryptography. He showed how to build special codes, including "convolutional" and "quantum" codes. These methods helped create codes with specific features like length and how much information they could carry. He also worked on secure ways to send secret messages using algebra.
