Douglas Hartree

Douglas Rayner Hartree PhD, FRS was an English mathematician and physicist most famous for the development of numerical analysis and its application to the HartreeFock equations of atomic physics and the construction of a differential analyser using Meccano.

Douglas Hartree was born in Cambridge, England. His father, William, was a lecturer in engineering at Cambridge University and his mother, Eva Rayner, was president of the National Council of Women and mayor of the city of Cambridge. One of his greatgrandfathers was Samuel Smiles another was the marine engineer William Hartree, partner of John Penn. He was the oldest of three sons, although his two younger brothers did not survive to adulthood. He attended St Johns College, Cambridge but the first world war interrupted his studies. He joined a group working on antiaircraft ballistics under A. V. Hill, where he gained considerable skill and an abiding interest in practical calculation and numerical methods for differential equations, executing most of his own work with pencil and paper. After the end of World War I, Hartree returned to Cambridge graduating in 1922 with a Second Class degree in natural sciences.

Source: Wikipedia