Theodore William Chaundy was born in Broad Street, Oxford, where his father John Chaundy ran a print shop.
It was from here at the age of three that he watched Gladstone arrive to deliver a lecture at the Sheldonian across the road. He went to school at the other end of the street, then to Balliol College in the middle of the street before crossing the High Street in 1910 to take up his life’s work as a mathematics Student and tutor at Christ Church college.
He was an Oxford man through and through. He was, by inheritance, one of the city’s freemen, the cause of which became one of the chief interests of his life. He once said that if ever a road was built through Port Meadow he would emigrate.
Theo was, by all accounts, an excellent tutor. A large proportion of his pupils achieved the highest honours. Einstein became a friend whilst at Oxford. The slow and the dull were allegedly terrified of his mental agility. He was one of the “purest” of mathematicians. He claimed not to understand applied maths. Differential equations and theory of numbers were his two main subjects. His “Differential Calculus” was published by the Oxford University Press in 1935. His name is immortalised in the Birchnall-Chaundy Curve. During the Second World War he spent a short time at Bletchley Park with other mathematicians helping to decipher the German Enigma codes. As senior Don at Christ Church, he had the honour of welcoming President Truman to the college and made the after-dinner speech for him.
His mathematical mind did have some practical applications, however. So as not to be disturbed, he used a large study at the top of his house to which a bell was wired up so that he could be summoned downstairs. For a visitor, one ring = man, for a meal two rings = lunch-time, tea-time, din-ner, for a telephone call, three rings = tel-e-phone. He did the Times crossword everyday and was a renowned punster. When he gave his son a Concise Oxford Dictionary he inscribed it “To David, hoping he will be a concise Oxford man”. David recalls that this kind of humour coupled with his sense of irony “cheered everyone up and made life more fun”.
His work, he once said, is entirely in terms of patterns of pure number. This love of pattern and form manifested itself in such other allegiances as dance, music and botany. The compelling tunes and rhythms of Morris dancing made a great impression on him. He became one of the so-called “dancing dons”, a group of senior university men who danced at various garden parties in the years leading up to the first world war. In 1923 he was instrumental in inaugurating the dancing which is now a popular feature of Oxford’s May Morning celebrations.
In other spheres of music, the contrapuntal tones of Bach delighted him and he once described the later quartets of Beethoven as “pure mathematics”. Wild flowers, their form and “habit” again fascinated him for the patterns they create. He became a keen amateur botanist. His son David recalls that on frequent family holidays to Spain they would always have a picnic lunch in a place where he could examine the local flora.
Personally, Theo was an unassuming, gentle and caring individual, always willing to help the underdog. He was a keen socialist and a member of the Fabian society in the days when George Bernard Shaw, G.D.H. Cole and Prof. Gilbert Murray were also members. His daughter, Deirdre, was once told he was at Murray’s home when Shaw first read the manuscript of Pygmalion before it was published. He was also a good friend of T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia.
Theo worked hard for an array of charities including the Oxford Cottage Improvement Society, in connection with which Chaundy House, on the Northway Estate, was named after him. For his obituary in The Times, his son-in-law, Ronald Butt wrote “He was a very kind man whose kindness took the form of practical help for people in need, kind companionship and hospitality. Though his wit was astringent, I never heard him express dislike of anyone or speak unkindly: it was as though he accepted that everyone had his place in the scheme of things and it was not his business to judge it.”
Following abuse of my email address under the Harassment Act 1997,
my cousin Bob has kindly agreed to accept email on my behalf at Bob Chaundy