Francis Guthrie born in London January 22, 1831 - October 19, 1899 Claremont, Cape Town, was a South African mathematician and botanist who first posed the Four Colour Problem in 1852. The Republic of South Africa (also known by other official names) is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa The four color theorem (also known as the four color map theorem) states that given any plane separated into regions such as a political map of the states of a country At the time, Guthrie was a student of Augustus De Morgan at University College London. Augustus De Morgan ( 27 June, 1806 &ndash 18 March, 1871) was a British Mathematician and Logician. University College London ( UCL) is a multi-faculty university institution based in the United Kingdom and a constituent college of the University of London He studied under John Lindley, Professor of Botany at the University of London. John Lindley ( February 8, 1799 - November 1, 1865) was an English Botanist. The University of London is a university based primarily in London, England, UK. Guthrie obtained his B. A. in 1850, and LL. B. in 1852 with first class honours. While colouring a map of the counties of England, he noticed that at least four colours were required so that no two regions sharing a common border were the same colour. He postulated that four colours would be sufficient to colour any map. This became known as the Four Colour Problem, and remained one of the most famous unsolved problems in topology for more than a century, until it was eventually proven in 1976 using a controversial computer-aided proof which was lengthy and inelegant. Topology ( Greek topos, "place" and logos, "study" is the branch of Mathematics that studies the properties of
Guthrie arrived in South Africa on 10 April 1861 and was met and entertained by Dr. Dale (later Sir Langham Dale), who was instrumental in the establishing of the University of the Cape of Good Hope in June 1873. The University of the Cape of Good Hope, renamed the University of South Africa in 1916 was created by Act 16 of 1873 of the Cape of Good Hope Parliament. Guthrie took up the post of mathematics master at the Graaff-Reinet College. While there he gave a course of acclaimed public lectures on botany in 1862 and thus started a life-long friendship with local resident Harry Bolus. Harry Bolus ( April 28, 1834 - May 25, 1911) was a South African botanist botanical artist businessman and philanthropist He advised Bolus to take up the study of botany to ease his grief at the loss of his six year old son. When Bolus left for Cape Town a few years later, he persuaded Guthrie to move there as well in 1875. For a while he practised at the Bar and edited a newspaper before becoming professor of mathematics at the South African College, which later became the University of Cape Town. The University of Cape Town ( UCT) is a Public university located on the Rhodes Estate on the slopes of Devil's Peak, in Cape Town He remained there from 1876 until he retired in 1898, staying on his farm at Raapenberg.
When Bolus undertook to do the family of Ericaceae for Flora Capensis, he enlisted Guthrie's aid and they collaborated until Guthrie's death. The Plant family Ericaceae (also called the heath family or ericaceous plants) are mostly lime -hating ( Calcifuge) Before his death, Guthrie had made an extensive collection of the Cape Peninsula flora, which was eventually housed as the Guthrie Herbarium in the University of Cape Town Botany Department, and used for teaching and reference. The Cape Peninsula is a generally rocky Peninsula that juts out for 75 km (47 mi into the Atlantic Ocean at the south-western extremity of the Though Guthrie did not live to see the published work, he had the satisfaction of knowing that the greater part of the work on Erica had been completed. He is buried in the old cemetery attached to St. Thomas's Church in Rondebosch. Rondebosch is one of the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa.
He was described as being warm-hearted, good-humoured, patient, and unpretentious. The scope of his interests was diverse, and ranged from a lecture titled, “The Heat of the Sun in South Africa”, in which he pointed out that it must be possible to transform solar energy into mechanical power, to aeronautics, where he was involved in the development of the first aircraft. Although dubbed the inventor of the first flying machine, no documentation of his work exists.
Some fynbos species from the Bredasdorp area were named after him: Gladiolous guthriei, Erica guthriei and Homoglossum guthriei, as well as the genus Guthriea Bolus. Fynbos (ˈfəinbɒs or anglicised as /ˈfeɪnbɒs/ meaning "fine bush" in Afrikaans) is the natural Shrubland or heathland vegetation occurring Cyrtanthus guthrieae was named after his daughter Louisa Guthrie, who was also a botanist. The new genus Guthriea was collected by Harry Bolus from Oudeberg in the Graaff-Reinet district, and also recorded from the Wittebergen in the Barkly East district and Mont-aux-Sources in Natal. Barkly East is a town in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, capital of a district of the same name and 80 miles by rail E The Colony of Natal was a British colony in south-eastern Africa. To date no other species in this genus has been found.
Guthrie was an early member of the South African Philosophical Society (later the Royal Society of South Africa), an active member of the Meteorological Commission and an Examiner of the Cape University.
Source
- Botanical Exploration of Southern Africa Mary Gunn & LE Codd (AA Balkema 1981)
External links
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/The_four_colour_theorem.html
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