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Leopold Pars
Times obituary
Work on Analytical Dynamics
Dr. L. A. Pars, Life Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and formerly University Lecturer in Mathernatics at the University of Cambridge, died on January 28. He was 89.
Leopold Alexander Pars, known to his friends as Alan, was born on January 2, 1896. He was educated at Latymer Upper School, from which he entered Jesus College as a Foundation Scholar in 1915. After gaining first classes in both parts of the Mathematical Tripos, he won the First Smith's Prize in 1921. In the same year, his college recognized his outstanding ability by electing him into the Fellowship, which he retained until the end of his life.
For 25 years he served the college as Director of Studies in Mathematics, and for almost as long as Praelector. From 1958 until 1964 he was President of the college, an office for which he was suited to perfection by reason of his instinctive hospitality.
Pars never married, and the bachelor quarters he occupied in college were among the rooms most frequented by undergraduates. They could hardly fail to be charmed by his friendly interest in their activities, astounded by his wide range of exact quotation, and delighted by his knowledge of and enthusiasm for the theater, though latterly few may have been aware of his earlier skill as a mountaineer.
Although it is natural to think of Pars first and foremost as a college man, his influence on mathematics, and still more on young mathematicians, was substantial. His magnum opus, A Treatise on Analytical Dynamics, published in 1965, enshrined a lifetime's research and experience and was written with characteristic lucidity and thoroughness.
That he was no narrow specialist is shown by his admirable Calculus of Variations, published in 1962. He justifiably regarded himself as a mathematician, not as an analytical dynamicist nor even as an applied mathematician.
He was a teacher and lecturer of great skill and clarity whose range, though true to the tradition he inherited from his esteemed predecessor at Jesus College, William Welsh, was beyond the reach of most of his younger colleagues in the faculty.
It was perhaps inevitable that his three books—he also published an Introduction to Dynamics in 1953—appeared after he had retired from the more demanding college offices, for in his career years his devotion to the task of teaching the young left him with less free time for research and writing than his mathematical prowess deserved. But they were worth waiting for, and he will long be remembered.
Work on Analytical Dynamics
Dr. L. A. Pars, Life Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and formerly University Lecturer in Mathernatics at the University of Cambridge, died on January 28. He was 89.
Leopold Alexander Pars, known to his friends as Alan, was born on January 2, 1896. He was educated at Latymer Upper School, from which he entered Jesus College as a Foundation Scholar in 1915. After gaining first classes in both parts of the Mathematical Tripos, he won the First Smith's Prize in 1921. In the same year, his college recognized his outstanding ability by electing him into the Fellowship, which he retained until the end of his life.
For 25 years he served the college as Director of Studies in Mathematics, and for almost as long as Praelector. From 1958 until 1964 he was President of the college, an office for which he was suited to perfection by reason of his instinctive hospitality.
Pars never married, and the bachelor quarters he occupied in college were among the rooms most frequented by undergraduates. They could hardly fail to be charmed by his friendly interest in their activities, astounded by his wide range of exact quotation, and delighted by his knowledge of and enthusiasm for the theater, though latterly few may have been aware of his earlier skill as a mountaineer.
Although it is natural to think of Pars first and foremost as a college man, his influence on mathematics, and still more on young mathematicians, was substantial. His magnum opus, A Treatise on Analytical Dynamics, published in 1965, enshrined a lifetime's research and experience and was written with characteristic lucidity and thoroughness.
That he was no narrow specialist is shown by his admirable Calculus of Variations, published in 1962. He justifiably regarded himself as a mathematician, not as an analytical dynamicist nor even as an applied mathematician.
He was a teacher and lecturer of great skill and clarity whose range, though true to the tradition he inherited from his esteemed predecessor at Jesus College, William Welsh, was beyond the reach of most of his younger colleagues in the faculty.
It was perhaps inevitable that his three books—he also published an Introduction to Dynamics in 1953—appeared after he had retired from the more demanding college offices, for in his career years his devotion to the task of teaching the young left him with less free time for research and writing than his mathematical prowess deserved. But they were worth waiting for, and he will long be remembered.
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