Background
Clifford Hugh Dowker grew up on a small farm in Western Ontario, Canada.
Clifford Hugh Dowker grew up on a small farm in Western Ontario, Canada.
He earned his Doctor of Philosophy from Princeton University in 1938.
He excelled in mathematics and was paid to teach his math teacher math at his secondary school. He was awarded a scholarship at Western Ontario University, where he got his Bachelor of Surgery in 1933. He wanted to pursue a career as a teacher, but he was persuaded to continue with his education because of his extraordinary mathematical talent.
After earning his doctorate, he became an instructor at the Western Ontario University for a year.
The next year, he worked as an assistant back at Princeton under John von Neumann. During World World War II, he worked for the United States. Air Force, calculating the trajectories of projectiles.
After the war, he was appointed associate professor at the Tufts University. Because of Senator Joseph McCarthy"s red scare, he decided to take his family to England shortly thereafter, where he was appointed Reader in applied mathematics at Birkbeck College in 1951.
In 1962 he was granted a personal chair, until he retired in 1979.
The last years of his life were marked by a long illness, yet he continued working, developing Dowker notation in the weeks before his death. Although a mathematical genius, he remained modest, with a gentle humor, to the end of his days.