Professor of Mathematics 1966-1973

‘Retirements: A.C. Offord’, LSE Magazine, November 1973, No46, p.8

‘Professor Offord came to LSE in 1966 to fill the newly created Chair in Mathematics. This had been established in response to the increasing demand for more sophisticated mathematics in the Social Sciences. He is a distinguished research mathematician with a worldwide reputation (most recently for his work on applications of Probability Theory of Mathematical Analysis), a reputation acknowledged by his election as Fellow of the Royal Society in 1952. Within the School he is perhaps better known for his kindness, his humanity and the care and effort that he has put into establishing Mathematics as a subject of serious study at LSE.

Before coming to the School Professor Offord served as Professor first in the University of Newcastle and then at Birkbeck College. But his career began at Cambridge in the heyday of the great English mathematicians Hardy and Littlewood and he is very conscious of being a follower in the traditions that they established. His courtesy and mildness of manner are perhaps typical of the Cambridge don of the period but without the eccentricity for which, Hardy, in particular, was famous. His attitudes in contrast have always been unconventional, and it is for his espousal if radical reforms that he is probably most widely known outside the academic world.

The School has been fortunate in attracting such a humane and gifted man as its first Professor of Mathematics.’

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