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Frank Featherstone Bonsall FRS (31 March 1920, Crouch End, London – 22 February 2011, Harrogate) was a British mathematician.

Personal life

Bonsall was born on 31 March 1920, the youngest son of Wilfred C Bonsall and Sarah Frank. His older brother was Arthur Bonsall. He married Gillian Patrick, a Somerville graduate, in 1947. Bonsall and his wife were keen hill-walkers. He wrote two articles for The Scottish Mountaineering Club on the definition of a Munro. After his retirement, Bonsall and his wife moved to Harrogate.

Career

Bonsall graduated from Bishop's Stortford College in 1938, and studied at Merton College, Oxford. He served in World War II, in the Corps of Royal Engineers, and in India from 1944 to 1946.

He lectured at the University of Edinburgh from 1947 to 1948; was visiting associate professor at Oklahoma State University from 1950 to 1951; taught at Newcastle University, with Werner Wolfgang Rogosinski in the 1950s. He taught at the University of Edinburgh, from 1963 to 1984. In 1963, a second chair in Mathematics was established (the Maclaurin chair). Bonsall took up the chair in 1965, but spent the following year as a visiting professor at Yale. In 1966, he was awarded the London Mathematical Society's Berwick Prize.

Despite not himself having a PhD, Bonsall supervised many PhD candidates who knew him affectionately as "FFB".

Works

• Compact linear operators, Yale University, Dept. of Mathematics, 1967
• Frank F. Bonsall, John Duncan, Numerical ranges of operators and normed spaces and of all elements of normed algebras, London Mathematical Society, 1971
• Frank F. Bonsall, J. Duncan, Numerical ranges II, Cambridge univ. press, 1973
• Frank F. Bonsall, J. Duncan, Complete normed algebras, 1973

See also

• Arthur Bonsall
• Berwick Prize
• List of fellows of the Royal Society elected in 1970
• List of mathematicians (B)

References

1. Gillespie, T. A. (2020). "Frank Featherstone Bonsall. 31 March 1920 – 22 February 2011". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 69: 63–77. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2020.0007. S2CID 222142931.
2. "Obituaries". University of Oxford Gazette. 141 (4947): 500. 10 March 2011.
3. "Frank Bonsall | Herald Scotland". Archived from the original on 16 January 2015. Retrieved 16 November 2011.
4. ^ "Frank Bonsall - Biography". mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
5. ^ Levens, R.G.C., ed. (1964). Merton College Register 1900–1964. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 290.
7. "Frank Bonsall - Biography". Archive.today. Archived from the original on 31 July 2012. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
8. Alastair Gillespie (4 April 2011). "Professor Frank Bonsall: Leading mathematician of the post-war years who led research into functional analysis". The Independent.
9. "Frank Bonsall - The Mathematics Genealogy Project". Mathgenealogy.org. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
10. Rickart, C. E. (1975). "Review: Complete normed algebras by F. F. Bonsall and J. Duncan" (PDF). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 81, Part 1 (3): 514–522. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1975-13727-x.

External links

• Frank Bonsall - The Mathematics Genealogy Project
• search on author FF Bonsall from Google Scholar

• 1920 births
• 2011 deaths
• 20th-century British mathematicians
• 21st-century British mathematicians
• Academics of the University of Edinburgh
• Alumni of Merton College, Oxford
• British Army personnel of World War II
• Fellows of the Royal Society
• People educated at Bishop's Stortford College
• People from Crouch End
• British people in colonial India