For my father, Peter Neumann, who has died aged 79, two things were the overriding loves of his life: family and mathematics.
Peter continued the mathematical tradition of his parents, Bernhard Neumann and Hanna (nee von Caemmerer), both professors of mathematics. Born in Oxford and raised in Hull, where he attended Hymers College, Peter returned to Oxford, to Queen’s College, as an undergraduate in 1959. He remained there ever after.
At Oxford he met Sylvia Bull, a fellow mathematics undergraduate. They married in 1962, before he graduated. Peter became a fellow of Queen’s, and he and Sylvia established a family life in Oxford, where I and my sister and brother were born. Peter was a familiar sight cycling from home to Queen’s and the Mathematical Institute, and would sometimes disappear for a long cycle ride, claiming that that was when his best mathematical thinking was done.
Peter’s research covered areas of algebra, in particular group theory, and the history of algebra. His own research led to his DPhil and later DSc and he supervised almost 40 DPhil students. Many students remained great friends. Peter enjoyed conferences abroad, lecturing in German – picked up from his parents and other mathematicians – as well as English. He took great pleasure in hosting gatherings at home, and in college, sometimes musical, playing his violin or viola – learned at home and at school, and continued throughout his life.
Peter retired in 2008 after over 40 years of college and university teaching. He had held numerous voluntary posts in mathematics and its education for the London Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association and the British Society for the History of Mathematics. He was the first chair of the UK Mathematics Trust. For services to mathematics education he was made an OBE in 2008.
In retirement he continued teaching, lecturing and training new lecturers, but he was also able to improve his French and to spend time researching another lifelong interest, which led to the publication of The Mathematical Writings of Evariste Galois, published for the bicentenary of Galois’ birth, in 2011.
A stroke in 2018 limited him physically. He moved to a care home, but remained devoted to Sylvia, with whom he collaborated daily in person or over Facetime on the Guardian cryptic crossword. He is survived by Sylvia, their children, Jenny, James and me, by 10 grandchildren and a great-grandson, and by his siblings, Irene, Walter, Barbara and Daniel.
