On this weekend: Child maths prodigy Ruth Lawrence became youngest ever British person to gain an Oxford degree aged 13
Jul 4 2009 by John Avison, Huddersfield Daily Examiner
HUDDERSFIELD child prodigy Ruth Lawrence achieved a starred first in mathematics at Oxford University on July 5, 1985.
The 13-year-old was the youngest British person ever to earn a first-class degree and the youngest known graduate of Oxford University.
As well as being the only student to attain that grade this year she was also one of two students to be awarded a prize and special commendation for the degree she had completed in two years instead of the usual three.
The teenager, who never went to school and was tutored by her father Harry Lawrence, said that the result was much as she had expected.
Mr Lawrence has been his daughter's constant companion and attended all of her lectures and tutorials at university.
They arrived at the Examination School together on a tandem bicycle to see her results posted on a board.
Ruth told Sue Cook on Breakfast Time that she intended to stay in Oxford for the next three years doing some sort of research.
She did not, at that stage, know which branch of mathematics she wanted to specialise in or what she would ultimately like to achieve, but because of the broad range of options she had taken – including pure and applied maths.
She said she could go off in virtually any direction.
By the age of nine Ruth had already entered the record books by achieving a grade A in her Pure Mathematics A-level.
Ruth planned to spend the £100 prize she won from Oxford University on new maths books for her 14th birthday in August.
In 1981 Ruth Lawrence became the youngest person ever to pass the Oxford entrance exam.
She gained her PhD in 1989 and went to work at Harvard in the US. Her father went with her.
From 1993, in her mid-twenties, Ruth was an assistant professor, then professor, at the University of Michigan studying knot theory.
In 1998 she married a mathematician at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ariyeh Neimark, who is six years younger than her father. The couple have two children.
Since 1999 she has been Associate Professor of Maths at the Einstein Institute of Mathematics, part of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she is known as Ruth Lawrence-Neimark.
ON this day in 1976, Israeli commandos rescued 100 hostages, mostly Israelis or Jews, held by pro-Palestinian hijackers at Entebbe airport in Uganda.
Ugandan soldiers and the hijackers were taken completely by surprise when three Hercules transport planes landed after a 2,500-mile trip from Israel.
About 200 elite troops ran out and stormed the airport building.
During a 35-minute battle, 20 Ugandan soldiers and all seven hijackers died along with three hostages.
The leader of the assault force, Lt Col Yonatan Netanyahu, was also shot dead by a Ugandan sentry.
The Israelis destroyed 11 Russian-built MiG fighters, which amounted to a quarter of Uganda’s air force.
The surviving hostages were then flown to Israel with a stopover in Nairobi, Kenya, where some of the injured were treated by Israeli doctors and at least two transferred to hospital there.
Speaking at the Israeli Knesset (parliament) Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who ordered the raid, said: “This operation will certainly be inscribed in the annals of military history, in legend and in national tradition.”
The crisis began on June 27, when four militants seized an Air France flight, flying from Israel to Paris via Athens, with 250 people on board.
The hijackers – two from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and two from Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang – diverted the plane to Entebbe, where it arrived on June 28.
The hijackers, who were joined by three more colleagues, demanded the release of 53 militants held in jails in Israel and four other countries.
Uganda’s president and dictator Idi Amin arrived at the airport to give a speech in support of the PFLP and supplied the hijackers with extra troops and weapons.
On July 1, the hijackers released a large number of hostages but continued to hold captive the remaining 100 passengers who were Israelis or Jews.
Those who were freed were flown to Paris and London.
The hijackers then set a deadline for their demands to be met or they would blow up the airliner and its passengers. But their plan was foiled by the dramatic Israeli raid.
Idi Amin was humiliated by the surprise raid. He believed Kenya had colluded with Israel in planning the raid and hundreds of Kenyans living in Uganda were massacred soon afterwards.
But from this time, Amin’s regime began to break down. Two years later Idi Amin was forced into exile in Saudi Arabia.
He died in Jeddah in August 2003.
