Raymond Paley

Raymond E. A. C. Paley
Born	7 January 1907(1907-01-07) Bournemouth, England
Died	7 April 1933(1933-04-07) (aged 26) Deception Pass, Fossil Mountain, in the Canadian Rockies
Nationality	United Kingdom
Fields	Mathematics
Alma mater	University of Cambridge
Known for	Paley graph Paley–Wiener theorem
Notable awards	Smith's Prize

Raymond Edward Alan Christopher Paley (7 January 1907 – 7 April 1933) was an English mathematician. Paley was born in Bournemouth, England. He was educated at Eton. From there he entered Trinity College, Cambridge where he showed himself the most brilliant student among a remarkable collection of fellow undergraduates. He won a Smith's Prize in 1930 and was elected a fellow of Trinity College.

His contributions include the Paley construction for Hadamard matrices (closely related to the Paley graphs in graph theory) and his collaboration with Norbert Wiener in the Paley–Wiener theorem (harmonic analysis). He collaborated with A. Zygmund on Fourier series (see also Paley–Zygmund inequality) and worked with J. E. Littlewood on what became known as Littlewood–Paley theory, an application of real-variable techniques in complex analysis.

Photograph of Paley's grave in The Old Banff Cemetery

On 7 April 1933, Paley died in a skiing accident when skiing alone at an altitude of 9,600 ft in Banff, Alberta. He was killed by an avalanche at Deception Pass, Fossil Mountain, in the Canadian Rockies. His death was witnessed by companions lower down the mountainside. Park wardens and a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police recovered the body. He is buried in the Banff town cemetery.

External links

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Raymond Paley", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Paley.html .