Tuesday, July 09, 2024

Frank Duckworth, co-deviser of the Duckworth Lewis method, lodged with John Lennon and his Aunt Mimi

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Liberal England's Trivial Fact of the Day is taken from the Guardian obituary of the mathematician Frank Duckworth.

It was he who, together with the cricket statistician Tony Lewis, devised the Duckworth-Lewis method. This is a formula used to ensure that the side batting is second is set a fair target in rain-affected matches.

The obituary reveals:
After graduating in the early 60s he stayed on at Liverpool to study for a PhD in metallurgy, sharing a house for a time with John Lennon, as a lodger of Lennon’s aunt Mimi ("not that we had much to do with him, although we heard him plucking his guitar occasionally").
When Duckworth moved on, it was to share a flat with Johnny Ball.

The Duckworth=Lewis method is now known as the Duckworth–Lewis–Stern method because of the later contribution of the Australian mathematician and statistician Steven Stern.

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