James H. Davenport

James Harold Davenport (born 15 October 1953) is a British computer scientist who works in computer algebra. Having done his PhD and early research at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, he is the Hebron and Medlock Professor of Information Technology at the University of Bath in Bath, England.[1][3]

For other people with the same name, see Davenport (surname).
James Davenport
James Davenport in 2001
Born
James Harold Davenport

(1953-09-26) 26 September 1953
Scientific career
FieldsCryptography
Computer algebra systems[1]
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge
University of Bath
ThesisOn the integration of algebraic functions (1979)
Doctoral advisorJohn ffitch
Arthur Norman[2]
Websitepeople.bath.ac.uk/masjhd

Early life

He is the son of the mathematician Harold Davenport. He was educated at Marlborough College, and was then a student at Trinity College, Cambridge.[4]

In 1969, the team that developed the automated teller machine in the United Kingdom at IBM Hursley used parts from that project to build an IBM School Computer. It was a community outreach project, and it went on tour. When it came to Marlborough College, Davenport, aged 16, discovered that, although it was ostensibly a six-digit computer, the microcode had access to a 12-digit internal register to do multiply/divide. He therefore used this to implement Draim's algorithm from his father's book, The Higher Arithmetic, and tested eight-digit numbers for primality.[5]

Between school and university, Davenport worked in a government laboratory for nine months, again writing and using multiword arithmetic, but also using number theory to solve a problem in hashing, which was published. He went up to Trinity College, where he graduated B.A. in 1974, M.A in 1978, and Ph.D. in 1980. He was at IBM Yorktown Heights for a year, and returned to Cambridge as a Research Fellow. He went to Grenoble for a year, before taking a post at the University of Bath "for a couple of years" in 1983.[5]

Research

Davenport is an author of a textbook about computer algebra and of many papers.[6][7][8][9] He has been Project Chair of the European OpenMath Project and its successor Thematic Network, with responsibilities for aligning OpenMath and MathML, producing Content Dictionaries and supervised a Reduce-based OpenMath/MathML translator, and was Treasurer of the European Mathematical Trust. He was Founding Editor-in-Chief of the London Mathematical Society's Journal of Computation and Mathematics.[10]

Awards and honours

Davenport was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science in September 2019 by the West University of Timişoara, Romania. This was in recognition of his pioneering and ongoing work in computer algebra systems and theory of symbolic computation.

In 2014, Davenport was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship by the Higher Education Academy.

He was awarded the Bronze Medal of the University of Helsinki in 2001.

Personal life

Davenport was (January to June 2017) a Fulbright CyberSecurity Scholar at New York University, [11] and maintained a blog[12] over the same period.

References
  1. James H. Davenport publications indexed by Google Scholar
  2. James H. Davenport at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. James H. Davenport's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  4. Marlborough College Register (11th ed.). 1997. p. 492.
  5. "Computing Reviews, Davenport, James". 1 October 2019. Archived from the original on 1 October 2019.
  6. Davenport, James Harold. On the integration of algebraic functions. Berlin ; New York : Springer, 1981. 197 p. ; 25 cm. ISBN 978-0-387-10290-0 (paperback)
  7. Computer algebra : systems and algorithms for algebraic computation / J.H. Davenport, Y. Siret, E. Tournier ; translated from the French by A. Davenport and J.H. Davenport. London : San Diego : Academic Press, 1988. xix, 267 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. ISBN 978-0-12-204230-0
  8. EUROCAL ’87 : European Conference on Computer Algebra, Leipzig, GDR, June 2–5, 1987 : proceedings / J.H. Davenport (ed.). Berlin ; New York : Springer-Verlag, c1989. viii, 499 p. : ill. ; 25 cm. ISBN 978-0-387-51517-5 (New York : acid-free paper) ISBN 978-3-540-51517-3 (Berlin : acid-free paper)
  9. Mathematical knowledge management : second international conference, MKM 2003, Bertinoro, Italy, February 16–18, 2003 : proceedings / Andrea Asperti, Bruno Buchberger, James H. Davenport (eds.).
  10. London Mathematical Society Journal of Computation and Mathematics: Editorial; Aims and Scope Archived December 16, 2010, at WebCite
  11. http://people.bath.ac.uk/masjhd/
  12. http://staff.bath.ac.uk/masjhd/blogplain.html
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