Dennis was my tutor at Magdalene College in the 50’s. He straightened out a first-year student by admonishing it might be good for him to attend lectures!
But Dennis’s lecturing style was a challenge – writing with one hand and simultaneously erasing with the other. Sitting up close, I was able to scribble down his notes before they disappeared. I cherish those lecture notes to this day.
Special memories of tutorials are when Dennis would lean back in his chair, cigarette in hand, and intone: “Let’s go up into five.” He would then take a complicated 3-D problem and explicate it elegantly in five dimensions. Some mind!
Dennis showed his humour in a problem he once set involving a compound matrix PAPA. The objective was to prove trace (PAPA) = 0. After discussing the proof, he remarked: “Thus we have shown trace (PAPA) vanishes – or PAPA vanishes without a trace!”
Well, grand-papa may have vanished, but not without a trace. He will be remembered for a long, long time by his children and grandchildren, to say nothing of his devoted students.
RICHARD HOLFORD (Former student who emigrated to the USA. Now retired after an extended career at Bell Labs.)
Richard Holford
03/02/2010
