Derrick Henry Lehmer
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Derrick Henry Lehmer (February 23 1905–May 22 1991) was an American mathematician who refined Edouard Lucas' work in the 1930s and devised the Lucas-Lehmer test for Mersenne primes.
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Early life
Lehmer was born in Berkeley, California, to Derrick Norman Lehmer, a professor of mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley, and Clara Eunice Mitchell.
He studied physics and earned a Bachelor degree from UC Berkeley, and continued with graduate studies at the University of Chicago.
Marriage
During his studies at Berkeley, Lehmer met Emma Markovna Trotskaia, a Russian student born on November 6, 1906, who was studying engineering. She subsequently changed her major and in 1928 earned a Bachelor degree in mathematics. Later that same year, Lehmer married Emma and they moved to Providence, Rhode Island, after Brown University offered him an instructorship.
Career
Lehmer received a Master's degree and a Ph.D., both from Brown University, in 1930.
He was a National Research Fellow at California Institute of Technology and Stanford University from 1930 to 1932.
He worked at Lehigh University from 1934 until 1940. For one year (1938-1939), the couple went to Cambridge, England, on a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Lehmers had two children and returned to America by ship just before the beginning of the Battle of the Atlantic.
In 1940, Lehmer accepted a position in the mathematics department of the University of California at Berkeley. At some point in his career there, he developed the Linear congruential generator (Pseudorandom number generator), which is frequently referred to as a Lehmer random number generator. He continued working at UC Berkeley until 1972, the year he became professor emeritus.
From 1945-1946, Lehmer worked on ENIAC, the first electronic computer in the United States.
Death
Derrick Henry Lehmer died in Berkeley on May 22, 1991.
See also
- Mathematics
- Edouard Lucas
- Lucas-Lehmer test
- Lucas-Lehmer test for Mersenne numbers
- Prime number
- Mersenne prime