George Frederick James Temple

George Frederick James Temple
Born	(1901-09-02)2 September 1901
Died	30 January 1992(1992-01-30) (aged 90) Isle of Wight
Alma mater	Birkbeck College, London B.Sc (1922)
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Imperial College London University of Cambridge King's College London University of Oxford
Doctoral students	Susan Brown,[1] Alan B. Tayler

Dom George Frederick James Temple FRS^[2] OSB (born 2 September 1901, London; died 30 January 1992, Isle of Wight) was an English mathematician, recipient of the Sylvester Medal in 1969. He was President of the London Mathematical Society in the years 1951–1953.^[3]

Temple took his first degree as an evening student at Birkbeck College, London, between 1918 and 1922, and also worked there as a research assistant. In 1924 he moved to Imperial College as a demonstrator, where he worked under the direction of Sydney Chapman. After a period spent with Eddington at Cambridge, he returned to Imperial as reader in mathematics. He was appointed professor of mathematics at King's College London in 1932, where he returned after war service with the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. In 1953 he was appointed Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Oxford, a chair which he held until 1968, and in which he succeeded Chapman. He was also an honorary Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford. During his time at Oxford he stated that he was 'a member of the most exclusive club in Oxford - which had no name or organisation but which met every Monday in the Eagle and Child to discourse with C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and other great writers.' The group was The Inklings, but by the 1950s it was well past its literary peak, perhaps indicated by the fact that Temple was unaware that the group had a name. ^[4]

After the death of his wife in 1980, Temple, a devout Christian, took monastic vows in the Benedictine order and entered Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight, where he remained until his death.

• George Temple (1981) 100 Years of Mathematics: a personal viewpoint, Springer-Verlag ISBN 0-387-91192-8.

• Mark McCartney, George Temple and Albert Green in Oxford's Sedleian Professors of Natural Philosophy ed. C.D. Hollings and M. McCartney, Oxford University Press 2023

Quotations related to George Frederick James Temple at Wikiquote