Andrew Ronald Mitchell.
Ronald Mitchell was known as Ron to his friends and colleagues. His parents were married in Forfar, and they moved to Dundee where Ron was born. His father was a blacksmith. Ron went to school at Morgan Academy, and was in the Boys Brigade at Clepington Parish Church. He played football at school, and his ability was recognised when he was invited to sign for North End Junior Football Club in Dundee. Ron left Morgan Academy in 1938, and won scholarships through the school to do a mathematics degree in the old University College, Dundee (a college of St Andrews University). During his time as a student he did vacation work for the Forestry Commission, starting by trimming limbs from trees and eventually becoming a tree feller.
He won medals for Special Mathematics (1939-40), Special Physics (1940-41), and Senior Honours Mathematics (1941-42). He graduated with First Class Honours in 1942, and was called up and sent to the wartime Ministry of Aircraft Production in London, where he remained until after the end of the war. His duties included the interrogation of captured Luftwaffe pilots, in an attempt to get information about their aircraft; some years later he met one of them at a conference. While he was in London, he continued to play football, turning out a few times for Chelsea.
In October 1946, Ron decided he would like to do a PhD, and returned to Dundee to see if this might be possible. There was no available supervisor in University College, but he made contact with D E Rutherford, who was then a Lecturer in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics in St Andrews University. Lecturing staff were in short supply at that time, and Rutherford agreed to act as supervisor in return for Ron taking an Assistant Lectureship for the duration of his PhD.
Although Rutherford was responsible for the Applied Mathematics part of the Mathematics Department in St Andrews, his main research interest was in Lattice Theory, so the supervision must have been fairly nominal, particularly as Ron's thesis was concerned with relaxation methods in compressible flow. After being awarded his PhD in 1950, Ron stayed on at St Andrews as a Lecturer. There was some co-operation with Rutherford as two joint papers were published. In particular, they discovered an early form of Successive Over-Relaxation, before the famous paper of David Young, although the work was never published.
During much of this time, Ron continued to play football, and signed as a part-time professional with a number of Scottish clubs. During the period 1946-1955, he played with St Johnstone, East Fife, Brechin City and Berwick Rangers in that order. While with Berwick Rangers, he won a Scottish Qualifying Cup South Runners Up Medal in 1949-50, and Scottish Qualifying Cup South Winners Medal in 1950-51.
Around 1965-66, Ron went to evening classes in Dundee to learn Russian. Having long since lost his School Leaving Certificate, he experienced some difficulty in persuading the organisers that he had an appropriate level of general education to allow him entry to the course; apparently a PhD was not an acceptable alternative. During Graeme Fairweather's thesis work, it had been realised that some Russians, in particular Samarskii, Andreyev and D'Yakonov were also working on high order difference methods for PDEs. Indeed a method, essentially that of the 1964 Numerische Mathematik paper, had been published in Russian at about the same time, and D'Yakonov had also discovered the loss of accuracy referred to earlier. A knowledge of Russian not only allowed Ron to keep up with the Russian literature as soon as it appeared, but was invaluable when he attended the ICM Meeting in Moscow in 1966. There he met D'Yakonov and, as a result, the latter visited Ron in the late sixties. In Moscow, Ron was able to indulge his love of soccer: he played for The Rest of the World against the USSR in a soccer match which was organised in the stadium of Moscow Dynamo. The home team, who had been in training for several weeks, won 5 - 2.
More info here http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Mitchell.html
He won medals for Special Mathematics (1939-40), Special Physics (1940-41), and Senior Honours Mathematics (1941-42). He graduated with First Class Honours in 1942, and was called up and sent to the wartime Ministry of Aircraft Production in London, where he remained until after the end of the war. His duties included the interrogation of captured Luftwaffe pilots, in an attempt to get information about their aircraft; some years later he met one of them at a conference. While he was in London, he continued to play football, turning out a few times for Chelsea.
In October 1946, Ron decided he would like to do a PhD, and returned to Dundee to see if this might be possible. There was no available supervisor in University College, but he made contact with D E Rutherford, who was then a Lecturer in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics in St Andrews University. Lecturing staff were in short supply at that time, and Rutherford agreed to act as supervisor in return for Ron taking an Assistant Lectureship for the duration of his PhD.
Although Rutherford was responsible for the Applied Mathematics part of the Mathematics Department in St Andrews, his main research interest was in Lattice Theory, so the supervision must have been fairly nominal, particularly as Ron's thesis was concerned with relaxation methods in compressible flow. After being awarded his PhD in 1950, Ron stayed on at St Andrews as a Lecturer. There was some co-operation with Rutherford as two joint papers were published. In particular, they discovered an early form of Successive Over-Relaxation, before the famous paper of David Young, although the work was never published.
During much of this time, Ron continued to play football, and signed as a part-time professional with a number of Scottish clubs. During the period 1946-1955, he played with St Johnstone, East Fife, Brechin City and Berwick Rangers in that order. While with Berwick Rangers, he won a Scottish Qualifying Cup South Runners Up Medal in 1949-50, and Scottish Qualifying Cup South Winners Medal in 1950-51.
Around 1965-66, Ron went to evening classes in Dundee to learn Russian. Having long since lost his School Leaving Certificate, he experienced some difficulty in persuading the organisers that he had an appropriate level of general education to allow him entry to the course; apparently a PhD was not an acceptable alternative. During Graeme Fairweather's thesis work, it had been realised that some Russians, in particular Samarskii, Andreyev and D'Yakonov were also working on high order difference methods for PDEs. Indeed a method, essentially that of the 1964 Numerische Mathematik paper, had been published in Russian at about the same time, and D'Yakonov had also discovered the loss of accuracy referred to earlier. A knowledge of Russian not only allowed Ron to keep up with the Russian literature as soon as it appeared, but was invaluable when he attended the ICM Meeting in Moscow in 1966. There he met D'Yakonov and, as a result, the latter visited Ron in the late sixties. In Moscow, Ron was able to indulge his love of soccer: he played for The Rest of the World against the USSR in a soccer match which was organised in the stadium of Moscow Dynamo. The home team, who had been in training for several weeks, won 5 - 2.
More info here http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Mitchell.html
