Leonard James Rogers
Leonard James Rogers FRS was a British mathematician who was the first to discover the Rogers–Ramanujan identity and Hölder's inequality, and who introduced Rogers polynomials. The Rogers–Szegő polynomials are named after him.Life
He born in Oxford, the second son of James Edwin Thorold Rogers and his second wife Anne Reynolds, and brother of Annie Rogers. He matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating B.A. and B.Mus. 1884, M.A. in 1887. He became lecturer in mathematics at Wadham College in 1885.
From 1888 to 1919 Rogers was Professor of Mathematics at the Yorkshire College—then an external college of University of London—which became the University of Leeds in 1904. In 1919 he retired because of bad health.
Rogers worked initially on reciprocants in the theory of differential invariants, and then moved into the area of special functions, where he anticipated results of Ramanujan. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1924. In the late 1920s, he published in the Mathematical Gazette four notes on geometrical problems, including on Malfatti's Problem.
Rogers died on 12 September 1933, in Oxford.Publications
