Mathematician, born in Berkeley, California, USA. A Cambridge University professor (194072) and professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley (1972), he was known for work in numbers theory, computing devices, mathematical tables, and other aids to computation.
Derrick Henry "Dick" 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. Lehmer's peripatetic career as a number theorist, with he and his wife taking numerous types of work in the United States and abroad to support themselves during the Great Depression, fortuitously brought him into the center of research into early electronic computing.
Early life
Lehmer was born in Berkeley, California, to Derrick Norman Lehmer, a professor of mathematics at the University of California, 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 (born November 6, 1906), a Russian student of his father's, who had begun with work toward an engineering degree but had subsequently switched focus to mathematics, earning her B.A. Later that same year, Lehmer married Emma and, following a tour of Northern California and a trip to Japan to meet Emma's family, they moved by car 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 1929 and 1930, respectively;
Movements during the Depression
Lehmer became a National Research Fellow, allowing him to take positions at the California Institute of Technology from 1930 to 1931 and at Stanford University from 1931 to 1932.
After being awarded a second National Research Fellowship, the Lehmers moved on to Princeton, New Jersey between 1932 and 1934, where Dick spent a short time at the Institute for Advanced Study.
He worked at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania from 1934 until 1938.
The year 1938-1939 was spent in England on a Guggenheim Fellowship visiting both the University of Cambridge and the University of Manchester, meeting Godfrey Hardy, John Edensor Littlewood, Harold Davenport, Kurt Mahler, Louis Mordell, and Paul Erdős.
Lehmer continued at Lehigh University for the 1939-1940 academic year.
Settling down
In 1940, Lehmer accepted a position back at the mathematics department of UC Berkeley.
Lehmer was chairman of the Department of Mathematics at University of California, Berkeley from 1954 until 1957.
ENIAC involvement
From 1945-1946, Lehmer served on the Computations Committee at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, a group established as part of the Ballistics Research Laboratory to prepare the ENIAC for utilization following its completion at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering;
Lehmer would remain active in computing developments for the remainder of his career.
McCarthy Era
In 1950, Lehmer was one of 31 University of California faculty fired after refusing to sign a loyalty oath, a policy initiated by the Board of Regents of the State of California in 1950 during the Communist scare personified by Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Death
Derrick Henry Lehmer died in Berkeley on May 22, 1991.
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