Gregor Harold Lawden, 26th December 1940 – 30th January 2021
Greg
in 1977
Gregor Lawden, known to colleagues as Greg, lectured in mathematics at Sussex from 1965 until retirement. His start as a mathematician was unusual in that his research ‘father’ was his actual father, the applied mathematician Derek F. Lawden, under whom Greg embarked on a study of optimisation problems.
Born in Birmingham, he completed his secondary education in New Zealand when the family moved there on his father taking up a Chair at the University of Canterbury. After a first-class honours degree and his time as a research student, Greg returned to the UK to start at Sussex in October 1965 as an Assistant Lecturer. This temporary post was the usual one then for a first appointment, and advancement to Lecturer followed as expected on completion of his PhD in 1966.
Greg had remarkable facility with languages, and while still a research student became fluent in reading and conversational Russian, gave some evening classes on the language (before ever teaching any mathematics) and was appointed to the NZ government panel of translators. He was fluent also in French, German and Italian and had at least a reading knowledge of Spanish, Polish and Greek. His hobby was to study a new language every year, and one of us remembers his remarking that he was looking into the languages of southern Africa that have click consonants. Greg translated into English two mathematical monographs and one textbook, from Russian, French and Polish respectively.
Sussex led the way in promoting degrees with a language component for science students as well as arts, and Greg would give tutorials in the relevant language to mathematics undergraduates about to spend a year abroad. For a period in 1989–90 he served as European Programmes Officer for the whole university, looking after all the degree schemes incorporating years abroad. Those were the early days of the Erasmus scheme and the job eventually fell to professional staff.
Greg was a dedicated teacher, rated very highly by students in formal feedback. Following early retirement in 1993 he continued with a varied load of part-time teaching for many years, including at one point being supplied by Sussex to teach the students of Queen’s University, Ontario, at their Herstmonceux Castle outpost. On his final full retirement in 2004 Sussex University awarded him the title of Emeritus Lecturer.
Charles Goldie and James Hirschfeld