mathematics

Martin Beale

Martin Beale is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Martin Beale rather than just read about it. In short: Evelyn Martin Lansdowne Beale FRS (8 September 1928 – 23 December 1985) was a British applied mathematician and statistician who was one of the pioneers of mathematical programming. Education and career Beale was born in Stanwell Moor in the Middlesex county (now in Surrey) of England.

Key takeaways

Martin Beale belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Martin Beale to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Martin Beale from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Evelyn Martin Lansdowne Beale FRS (8 September 1928 – 23 December 1985) was a British applied mathematician and statistician who was one of the pioneers of mathematical programming.

Education and career Beale was born in Stanwell Moor in the Middlesex county (now in Surrey) of England. His father, Evelyn Stewart Lansdowne Beale, was a senior physicist at the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. His mother, Muriel Rebecca (Betsy) Slade, was a leader in the Women's Institute and the great-niece of Edmond Warre. Beale was educated at Winchester College and at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating with First Class Honours in mathematics in 1949 and gaining a diploma in mathematical statistics in 1950. He then joined the Mathematics Group at the UK Admiralty Research Laboratory, working under Steven Vajda for 11 years, except for a leave of absence in 1957/58 to assist the Statistical Techniques Research Group at Princeton University. In 1955 he extended George Dantzig's Simplex Algorithm to minimise a quadratic function. In 1961, Beale became a founder member of a computer services company CEIR (Corporation for Economic and Industrial Research), which BP bought and renamed Scicon, and in 1967 he became visiting professor at Imperial College, London.

Honors Beale was chairman of the Mathematical Programming Society from 1974 to 1976, vice-president of the Royal Statistical Society from 1978 to 1980, a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and a member of the International Statistical Institute. In 1979, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society "for his applications of mathematical and statistical techniques to industrial problems and for his contributions to the theory of mathematical programming", and he was elected to the Council of the Royal Society in 1984. He was awarded the Silver Medal of the Operational Research Society in 1980, and became vice-president of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. He was also non-executive chairman of Beale International Technology. The Times suggested that he "used his blend of theory and state-of-the-art practice to encourage several generations of young mathematicians and computer scientists," and that his "many papers and his seminal book Mathematical Programming in Practice were major influences in their field, with their succinctness and clarity." Beale's FRS memoir mentioned his "extraordinary skill" and "substantial contributions to knowledge".

Memorials The Mathematical Programming Society awards the "Beale–Orchard-Hays" Prize in memory of him and William Orchard-Hays. The Operational Research Society awards the Beale Medal for "the most outstanding sustained contribution to Operational Research", and hosts the Beale Lectures in his honour as "one of OR's true greats". A two-day symposium was held in his memory at the Royal Society in 1987. The book Questions of Truth is dedicated to him and Ruth Polkinghorne. He makes a cameo appearance in E.M. Delafield's A Provincial Lady Goes Further.

Publications Beale produced over 100 scholarly papers and two books:

Beale, Evelyn Martin Lansdowne (1968). Mathematical programming in practice. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9780471060857. Beale, Evelyn Martin Landsdowne; MacKley, Lynne (1988). Introduction to optimization. Wiley. ISBN 9780471917601. (Based on his lecture notes and working papers at Scicon and edited by his former colleague Lynne Mackley.)

Family Beale was a son of Muriel Rebecca Beale OBE, descendant of General Sir John Slade, grandniece of Edmond Warre, niece of Henry Adolphus Warre Slade, daughter of Marcus Warre Slade Queen's Counsel, and first cousin of Madelaine Slade.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Martin Beale

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Martin Beale claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Martin Beale before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Martin Beale ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Martin Beale

In research: Martin Beale appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Martin Beale in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Martin Beale is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1928 births, 1985 deaths, 20th-century British mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Martin Beale outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Martin Beale in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Martin Beale means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Martin Beale out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Martin Beale in simple terms?

Evelyn Martin Lansdowne Beale FRS (8 September 1928 – 23 December 1985) was a British applied mathematician and statistician who was one of the pioneers of mathematical programming. Education and career Beale was born in Stanwell Moor in the Middlesex county (now in Surrey) of England.

Why does Martin Beale matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Martin Beale?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Martin Beale.