I am saddened to write this Memorium for Alan Jeffrey, a fine mathematician, and also a dear friend. I met Alan for the first time at a reception held in Ian Sneddon's home. It was for some of the plenary speakers at the North British Differential Equations seminars held in Edinburgh and Glasgow during 1972. Other speakers at the consortium were Jack Hale, Fritz John, Robert Carroll, Robert O'Mally and Norman Bazeley. My first impression of Alan, in addition to my appreciation of his clever wit, was that he is truly a gentleman in the most general interpretation of that word. Over the years Alan Jeffrey and I have participated in some joint mathematical research, and we have also enjoyed some summer days sailing on the Delaware Bay with winds of strength force five. Having made these small personal remarks, let me proceed to the substance of this biography. Alan Jeffrey, who received his PhD and DSc degrees in Mathematics from the University of London, was the first holder of the Chair of Engineering Mathematics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, to which he was appointed in 1965. Prior to that he began his research career in industry, initially as a research mathematician with the General Electric Company, and then with Rolls Royce, where he was first a research mathematician and later their senior Research Mathematician. During this period he became involved with research into control theory, electromagnetic theory, neutron transport theory, gas dynamics, magnetohylrodynamics and partial differential equations. It was during the latter part of his time with Rolls Royce that he was invited by Harold Grad to spend a year as a Visiting Scientist at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, to work on magnetohydrodynamic propagation. While at NYU his interest in magnetohydrodynamic waves broadened to include nonlinear wave propagation in general, largely as a result of the influence of work by Kurt Friedrichs and Peter Lax on quasilinear hyperbolic systems. Throughout this same period he shared an office with the Plasma Physicist Toslya Taniuti, a visitor to NYU from Nagoya University, concerned with research into plasma waves. Subsequently, they continued their rather different but complementary interests in nonlinear waves to co-author in 1964 one of the first books devoted to nonlinear wave propagation. Shortly after joining the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Alan Jeffrey became one of the organizers of the North British Differential Equations Year, involving a group of North British Universities, which was funded by the then Science Research Council. The purpose of this year-long activity was to stimulate interest in differential equations, and to bring together developments in both the theory and applications. To enable the interest generated in differential equations during this year till he sustained, he joined with a member from each participating university and found the North British Differential Equations Seminar. This seminar, for which he was Secretary until 1984, still continues, and it regularly brings visitors to the member universities from all over the world. Through grants provided by a variety of sources, and also through the seminar, academic visitors from 90 countries have been able to visit Newcastle to collaborate with Professor Jeffrey in connection with research into the partial differential equations of nonlinear wave propagation, and also to study the related problems for 111 continuum mechanics. He has lectured extensively throughout Europe, North America, China, Japan and the USSR. He has held positions at Stanford, Madison Wisconsin and Delaware while on sabbatical leave. In 1967 he was elected to Fellowship of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and in 1972 to Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
In 1975 he became the Foundling Editor of the Pitman Advanced Mathematics Publishing Programme which has now become part of the Longman Group. The purpose of this programme was to publish high-level research contributions in all areas of mathematics. As a result, the Research Note Series and the companion Surveys and Monograph Series came into being, both of which are now well established. His involvement with mathematical research also extends to the editorship of research journals. Until 1984 he was a Main Editor of Proceedings A of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and he is currently on the editorial boards of the international journals Applicable Analysis, Chaos, Solitons and Nonlinear Waves and Advances in Fluid Mechanics. He has published numerous books and research papers. He retired from his Chair in Newcastle in September 1994 and became an Adjunct Professor of Mathematics in the City University of Hong Kong. After this year, he returned periodically to lecture in Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China
Alan continued to make summer visits to Delaware with the family, to visit his favourite places and to continue his collaborations with the University of Delaware colleagues. He continued examining, reviewing articles and writing academic texts and continued to publish, never being short of an idea for a new book. Major interest in revising, updating and reprinting Gradshteyn and Ryzhik's Table of Integrals, Series and Products. He published ‘Applied Partial Differential Equations: An Introduction’ (2002), also revised editions of ‘Mathematics for Engineers and Scientists’. The latest book, ‘Matrix Operations for Engineers and Scientists’, was finished just before his death and was published in late 2010 by Springer. Alan was a plenary speaker at a conference in Tallinn in late 2010. He lost his wife of 53 years, Lisl, in 2005. Alan Jeffrey was a devoted family man, with a keen interest in his two granddaughters. He lived to see his granddaughter Sarah graduate with an MA Hons in Philosophy from Edinburgh University in 2008 and often visited Katie whilst she was studying in York. Alan went cruising in Europe and the Mediterranean with his son, Martin and enjoyed a surprise 80th birthday party in July 2009.