Mathematician:Leslie John Comrie

Mathematician

New Zealand mathematician and astronomer who was a pioneer in the field of mechanical computation.

Produced two editions of Barlow's Tables, making significant extensions and enhancements.

Computerised the British football pools.

Nationality

New Zealander

History

• Born: 15 August 1893, Pukekohe, New Zealand
• 1912 - 1916: Attended Auckland University College (part of the University of New Zealand)
• 1916: Fought in France with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force
• February 1918: Lost his left leg to a British shell
• 1918: Started using a mechanical calculator while recovering.
• 1920-22: First director of the Computing Section of the British Astronomical Association
• 1923: Received a PhD from St John's College of the University of Cambridge
• 1924: Traveled to the USA to teach at Swarthmore College and then Northwestern University. Pioneered the teaching of numerical analysis.
• 1926: Became deputy superintendent of HM Nautical Almanac Office at the Royal Greenwich Observatory
• 1928: The first to use punched card equipment for scientific calculations
• 1930: Promoted to Superintendent of the Nautical Almanac Office
• August 1936: Suspended because of tensions with his superiors, caused by his unconventional use of machines for calculation
• 1937: Founded Scientific Computing Service, Limited, the world's first private company for scientific computing
• During World War II: he headed a team of 30 scientists to computerise war work, such as the creation of bombing tables for the Allies
• 1948: Visited USA and New Zealand
• March 1950: Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London
• Died: 11 December 1950 after a series of strokes

Publications

• 1921: Eclipse of Rhea by the shadow of Titan (with A.E. Levin)
• April 1928: On the Construction of Tables by Interpolation (in which he describes the innovation of the use of punched card equipment for interpolating tables of data)

• 1930: Edited Barlow's Tables, 3rd ed.
  • 1941: Edited Barlow's Tables, 4th ed.

• 1931: Standard Four Figure Mathematical Tables (with L.M. Milne-Thomson)

• 1932: The application of the Hollerith tabulating machine to Brown's tables of the moon
• 1933: The computation of total solar eclipses
• 1933: The total solar eclipse of 1940 October 1
• 1937: The application of the Brunsviga twin 13Z calculating machine to the Hartmann formula for the reduction of prismatic spectrograms
• December 1941: Line of Planets (Popular Astronomy 49: pp. 397–398)
• December 1942: Errors in Mathematical Tables (Nature 150: p. 738)
• December 1949: The Green (?) Flash (?) (Popular Astronomy 57: pp. 42–43)