R. L. Hudson

Robin Lyth Hudson (4 May 1940 – 12 January 2021) was a British mathematician notable for his contribution to quantum probability.

Robin Hudson
A plenary talk at the EPSRC-LMS-IMA conference 'Hilbert's sixth problem' in Leicester, May 3, 2016[1]
Born4 May 1940
Died12 January 2021
Alma materUniversity of Oxford
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsUniversity of Nottingham, Loughborough University
Doctoral advisorJohn Trevor Lewis

Education and career

Hudson received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 1966 under John T. Lewis with a thesis entitled Generalised Translation-Invariant Mechanics. He was appointed assistant lecturer at the University of Nottingham in 1964, promoted to a chair in 1985 and served as head of department from 1987 to 1990. He spent sabbatical semesters in Heidelberg (1978), Austin, Texas (1983), and Colorado Boulder (1996). After taking early retirement in 1997, he held part-time research posts at Nottingham Trent University (1997–2005), the Slovak Academy of Sciences (1997–2000) and Loughborough University (2005–21), and a visiting professorship at the University of Łódź (2002) which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2013.

Hudson was a mathematical physicist who was one of the pioneers of quantum probability. An early result,[2] now known as Hudson's theorem in quantum optics, shows that the pure quantum states with positive Wigner quasiprobability distribution are the Gaussian ones. Together with PhD students, Hudson established one of the first quantum central limit theorems,[3] proved an early quantum de Finetti theorem,[4] and introduced quantum Brownian motion[5] as a non-commuting pair of families of unbounded operators, using the formalism of quantum field theory. He collaborated with K. R. Parthasarathy first at the University of Manchester, and later at University of Nottingham and at Loughborough University, on their seminal work in quantum stochastic calculus.[6][7][8]

In later papers he developed a theory of quantum stochastic double product integrals and their application to the quantum Yang–Baxter equation, the quantisation of Lie bialgebras and quantum Lévy area.[9]

Selected works

References
  1. Robin Hudson, "A short walk in quantum probability", Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 376 (2118) 20170226, 2018; doi:10.1098/rsta.2017.0226.
  2. Hudson, R. L. (1974). "When is the Wigner quasi-probability density non-negative?". Reports on Mathematical Physics. 6 (2): 249–252. Bibcode:1974RpMP....6..249H. doi:10.1016/0034-4877(74)90007-x.
  3. Cushen, C. D.; Hudson, R. L. (1971). "A quantum-mechanical central limit theorem". Journal of Applied Probability. 8 (3): 454–469. doi:10.2307/3212170. JSTOR 3212170. S2CID 123936481.
  4. Hudson, R. L.; Moody, G. R. (1976). "Locally normal symmetric states and an analogue of de Finetti's Theorem". Zeitschrift für Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie und Verwandte Gebiete. 33 (4): 343–351. doi:10.1007/BF00534784. S2CID 122364811.
  5. Cockcroft, A. M.; Hudson, R. L. (1977). "Quantum mechanical Wiener processes". Journal of Multivariate Analysis. 7: 107–124. doi:10.1016/0047-259X(77)90035-5.
  6. D. Applebaum. "Robin Hudson's Pathless Path to Quantum Stochastic Calculus" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016.
  7. Jinqiao Duan; Shunlong Luo; Caishi Wang (2010). Recent development in stochastic dynamics and stochastic analysis. World Scientific. p. preface-x. ISBN 978-9814277266.
  8. K. R. Parthasarathy. "Quantum Stochastic Calculus". Archived from the original on 28 July 2012.
  9. Hudson, R. L.; Pulmannová, S. (2004). "Double product integrals and Enriquez quantisation of Lie bialgebras I: The quasitriangularity relations". Journal of Mathematical Physics. 45: 2090–2105.


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