In Memoriam William Allan Light (1950-2002)

William Allan Light, known to his friends as ‘‘Will,’’ died on Sunday, December 8, 2002. He was at his home, Gartree House, Illston-on-the-Hill, near Leicester in England, when he was felled by a heart attack. He was 52 years old. Will is survived by his wife, the former Anita Edwards, by his mother, Mrs. Mary Light of Lancaster, and by a sister, Helen Johnson. At the time of death, Will was an active member of the Mathematics and Computer Science Department at Leicester University and was a Pro-Vice Chancellor of that University. Will was born on April 19, 1950, in Chester, England. He attended The University of Sussex and received there, in 1971, the degree of Bachelor of Science with honors. In the next year, he received a Certificate of Education from the University of North Wales and then went to Lancaster University, where he earned a Master of Arts degree (awarded with distinction) in the Department of Mathematics. Remaining at Lancaster, he then embarked on doctoral research under the supervision of Professor Charles Clenshaw. This work culminated in the awarding of the Doctorate of Philosophy in Mathematics in 1976. His dissertation concerned projections in numerical analysis, a theme that he continued to pursue after the doctorate. Will served first as Lecturer and then as Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Lancaster. He was noted for the clarity of his lectures and for an ability to keep the attention of his audience. In 1988, Will and his colleague John Gilbert took over the organization of the Science and Engineering Research Council’s Summer Schools in Numerical Analysis at Lancaster. These had been initiated in 1981 by Will’s then colleague, Peter Turner. Many young mathematicians owe their successful careers to the stimulation of these summer schools, in which attendees were brought into contact with pre-eminent experts through a program of lectures on special topics. In 1991, Will was appointed to a new Chair of Applied Mathematics and to Head of Department at the University of Leicester. Here, he arrived with a mandate to elevate the department’s strength in applied mathematics and computing. With the addition of brilliant young experts to the faculty, he succeeded astonishingly well in this endeavor, which was still in progress at the time of his death. In 1998, Will ARTICLE IN PRESS