Sir John Frank Charles Kingman was born on 28 August 1939 and is a British mathematician.
16 Facts About John Kingman
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John Kingman served as N M Rothschild and Sons Professor of Mathematical Sciences and Director of the Isaac Newton Institute at the University of Cambridge from 2001 until 2006, when he was succeeded by David Wallace.
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John Kingman is known for developing the mathematics of the coalescent theory, a theoretical model of inheritance that is fundamental to modern population genetics.
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John Kingman was awarded a scholarship to read mathematics at Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1956.
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Whittle left Cambridge for the University of Manchester, and, rather than follow him there, John Kingman moved instead to the University of Oxford, where he resumed his work under David Kendall.
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John Kingman returned as a member of the teaching staff and never completed his PhD.
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John Kingman married Valerie Crompton, a historian at the University of Sussex in 1964, and in 1965 he took up the post of Reader at the newly built University of Sussex where she was teaching, and was elected Professor of Mathematics and Statistics after only a year.
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John Kingman held this post until 1969, when he moved, figuratively, but not physically, to Oxford as Wallis Professor of Mathematics, a position he held until 1985.
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From October 1985, John Kingman was elected Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol.
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John Kingman remained in Bristol until 2001 when he took up his post at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge.
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John Kingman held directorships at a number of industrial companies, including IBM from 1985 to 1995 and SmithKline Beecham from 1986 to 1989.
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In 2002 John Kingman attracted some media attention by telling the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee that the 2011 UK Census could be conducted using new technology rather than the traditional headcount, or even not conducted at all.
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In 1985 John Kingman was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his work with the Science and Engineering Research Council.
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John Kingman holds honorary degrees from the University of Sussex, The University of Southampton, the University of Bristol, the University of the West of England, and Queen's University.
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John Kingman was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1971, later receiving its Royal Medal in 1983 "[i]n recognition of his distinguished researches on queuing theory, on regenerative phenomena, and on mathematical genetics".
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John Kingman was awarded the Guy Medal in silver by the Royal Statistical Society in 1981.