| Alexander Aitken |
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Information AboutAlexander Aitken |
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Aitken was one of the best Mental Calculator s known, and had a prodigious memory. He knew the first 2000 digits of π, and memorised the '' Aeneid '' in high school. Unfortunately, his inability to forget the horrors he witnessed in World War I led to recurrent depression throughout his life. He was an accomplished writer, being elected to the Royal Society Of Literature in 1964 in response to the publication of his war memoirs. He was also an excellent musician, being described by Eric Fenby as the most accomplished amateur musician he had ever known, and was a champion athlete in his younger days. An annual Aitken Prize is awarded by the New Zealand Mathematical Society for the best student talk at their colloquium. The prize was inaugurated in 1995 at the Aitken Centenary Conference, a joint mathematics and statistics conference held at the University of Otago to remember Aitken a hundred years after his birth. REFERENCES
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For Aitken's PhD students see
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