Alfred Young

Who was Alfred Young?

Alfred Young, FRS was a British mathematician.

He was born in Widnes, Lancashire, England and educated at Monkton Combe School in Somerset and Clare College, Cambridge, graduating BA as 10th Wrangler in 1895. He is known for his work in the area of group theory. Both Young diagrams and Young tableaux are named after him.

Young was appointed to the position of lecturer in Selwyn College, Cambridge, in 1901, transferring to Clare College in 1905. In 1902 he collaborated with John Hilton Grace on their book Algebra of Invariants.

In 1907 he married Edith Clara. He became an ordained clergyman in 1908, and became parish priest at Birdbrook in Essex in 1910, 25 miles east of Cambridge. He lived there the rest of his life, but in 1926 began lecturing again at Cambridge.

Most of his long series of papers on invariant theory and the symmetric group were written while he was a clergyman.