Life and career
Hilton was born in London, the son of Elizabeth Amelia (Freedman) and Mortimer Jacob Hilton, and was educated at St Paul's School. He won a scholarship to The Queen's College, Oxford in 1940.
During the Second World War, as an undergraduate, Hilton was obliged to enroll in training with the Royal Artillery, and was scheduled for conscription in summer 1942. Instead, he was interviewed by a team touring universities looking for mathematicians with knowledge of German, and was offered a position in the Foreign Office without being told the nature of the work. The team was, in fact, recruiting on behalf of the Government Code and Cypher School. He accepted, and, aged 18, arrived at wartime codebreaking station Bletchley Park on 12 January 1942.
He was initially put to work on Naval Enigma in Hut 8. In late 1942, he transferred to work on German teleprinter ciphers. A special section known as the "Testery" had been formed in July 1942 to work on one such cipher, codenamed "Tunny", and Hilton was one of the early members of the group. His role was to devise ways to deal with changes in Tunny, and to liaise with another section working on Tunny, the "Newmanry", which complemented the hand-methods of the Testery with specialised codebreaking machinery. Occasionally the same message was sent repeated, a major security blunder which Bletchley park called a "depth." Hilton derived great satisfaction from being able to look at the encoded texts coming from two separate teleprinter messages, combine them and extract two messages in clear German. Hilton obtained his DPhil in 1949 from Oxford University under the supervision of John Henry Whitehead. His dissertation was titled, "Calculation of the Homotopy Groups of An2-polyhedra".
In 1958, he became the Mason Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Birmingham. He moved to the United States in 1962 to be Professor of Mathematics at Cornell University, a post he held until 1971. From 1971 to 1973, he held a joint appointment as Fellow of the Battelle Seattle Research Center and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington. 1 September 1972, he was appointed Louis D. Beaumont University Professor at Case Western Reserve University. 1 September 1973, he took up the appointment. In 1982, he was appointed Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Binghamton University, becoming Emeritus in 2003. Latterly he spent each spring semester as Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at the University of Central Florida.
Hilton constructed the 51-letter palindrome "Doc note, I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod."
Hilton's principal research interests were in algebraic topology, homological algebra, categorical algebra and mathematics education. He published 15 books and over 600 articles in these areas, some jointly with colleagues.
Hilton is featured in Mathematical People.
He died in Binghamton, New York at age 87.
Hilton is portrayed by actor Matthew Beard in the 2014 film The Imitation Game, which tells the tale of Alan Turing and the cracking of Nazi Germany's Enigma code.
Lecturer at University of Cambridge, 1952 – 55Senior Lecturer at University of York, 1955–56Senior Lecturer at University of Manchester, England, 1956 – 58Mason Professor of Pure Mathematics, University of Birmingham, England, 1958 – 62Visiting Professor at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule at Zürich, ETH Zurich, 1966 – 67, 1981 – 82, 1988 – 89Visiting Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, 1967 – 68Visiting Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Autonomous University of Barcelona, 1989Professeur invité, University of Lausanne, in 1996American Mathematical SocietyMathematical Association of AmericaLondon Mathematical SocietyCambridge Philosophical SocietyRoyal Statistical SocietyHonorary member of the Mathematical Society of BelgiumHonorary member of Phi Beta Kappa SocietyFirst-Vice-President of the Mathematical Association of America 1978–1980Silver Medal, University of Helsinki, 1975Doctor of Humanities (hon. causa), N. University of Michigan, 1977Corresponding Member, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, 1979Doctor of Science (hon. causa), Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1983Doctor of Science (hon. causa), Autonomous University of Barcelona, 1989In August, 1983, an international conference on algebraic topology was held, under the auspices of the Canadian Mathematical Society, to mark Professor Hilton’s 60th Birthday. Professor Hilton was presented with a Festschrift of papers dedicated to him (London Mathematical Society Lecture Notes, Volume 86, 1983). The American Mathematical Society has published the proceedings under the title ‘Conference on Algebraic Topology in Honor of Peter Hilton’Hilton was selected in October, 1992, to deliver the invited lecture at the ‘Georges de Rham’ day at the University of Lausanne.An International Conference was held in Montreal in May, 1993, to mark the 70th birthday of Hilton. The proceedings were published as The Hilton Symposium, CRM Proceedings and Lecture Notes, Volume 6, American Mathematical Society (1994), edited by Guido Mislin.In 1994, Professor Hilton was the Mahler Lecturer of the Australian Mathematical Society.In the summers of 2001 and 2001, Professor Hilton was Visiting Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.In winter term of 2005 Professor Hilton received an appointment as Courtesy Faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences at University of South Florida.Member, Phi Beta Kappa Speakers PanelConsultant, John Wiley and Sons, Inc.Consultant, SRA/McGraw Hill Publishing CompanyConsultant, Children’s Television WorkshopChairman, International Advisory Board, Institut des Sciences Mathématiques, MontréalEditor, Publicacions MatemàtiquesEditor, Expositiones MathematicaeEditor, International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical SciencesEditor, Mathematical ReportsMember, American Mathematical Society Committee on Human Rights of MathematicsChairman, Mathematical Association of America Committee on Award for Distinguished ServiceChairman, Mathematical Association of America Committee on Award of Chauvenet PrizeMember, Mathematical Association of America Panel on RemediationMember, Mathematical Association of America Panel on Public RepresentationMember, Advisory Committee on Mathematics and Science, Council for Basic EducationSecretary, International Commission of Mathematical InstructionEditor, NICO (Brussels)Consultant, National Institute of Education, Department of Health Education And WelfareChairman, United States National Research Council Committee on Applied Mathematical TrainingMember, United States Commission on Mathematical Instruction, National Research CouncilChairman, Mathematical Association of America Committee on National AwardsPrincipal Editor, Ergebnisse der Mathematik Series, published by Springer VerlagEdChairman, National Advisory Board, Comprehensive School Mathematics ProjectMember, Committee on the Undergraduate Program in Mathematics, Mathematical Association of AmericaChairman, National Research Council Committee on Graduate and Postdoctoral Training in MathematicsChairman, United States Commission on Mathematical Instruction, National Research CouncilMember, Teacher Training Panel, Committee on the Undergraduate Program in Mathematics, Mathematical Association of AmericaJoint Chairman, Cambridge Conference on School MathematicsMember, National Advisory Committee, Boston University Mathematics ProjectMember, Committee on Films, Mathematical Association of AmericaMember, Subcommittee on Translations, Mathematical Association of AmericaMember, Committee on Postdoctoral Fellowships, American Mathematical SocietyChairman, New York State Department of Education Panel on Ph.D. Program in Mathematics (September, 1976)Editor, Journal of Pure and Applied AlgebraChairman, Committee to Select Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science (Book Award)Peter J. Hilton, An introduction to homotopy theory, Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics and Mathematical Physics, no. 43, Cambridge, at the University Press, 1953. ISBN 0-521-05265-3 . ISBN 978-0442028640. 0056289. Peter J. Hilton, Shaun Wylie, Homology theory: An introduction to algebraic topology, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1960. ISBN 0-521-09422-4 MR0115161Peter Hilton, Homotopy theory and duality, Gordon and Breach, New York-London-Paris, 1965 ISBN 0-677-00295-5 MR0198466H.B. Griffiths and P.J. Hilton, "A Comprehensive Textbook of Classical Mathematics", Van Nostrand Reinhold, London, 1970, ISBN 978-0442028640Peter J. Hilton, Guido Mislin, Joe Roitberg, Localization of nilpotent groups and spaces, North-Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam-Oxford, 1975. ISBN 0-444-10776-2 MR0478146Peter Hilton, Jean Pedersen, Build your own polyhedra. Second edition, Dale Seymour Publications, Palo Alto, 1994. ISBN 0-201-49096-XPeter Hilton, Derek Holton, Jean Pedersen, Mathematical reflections: In a room with many mirrors. Corrected edition, Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1996. ISBN 0-387-94770-1Peter J. Hilton, Urs Stammbach, A course in homological algebra. Second edition, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol 4, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1997. ISBN 0-387-94823-6 MR1438546Peter Hilton, Derek Holton, Jean Pedersen, Mathematical vistas: From a room with many windows, Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics, Springer-Verlag, New York, 2010. ISBN 1-4419-2867-7Peter Hilton, Jean Pedersen, A mathematical tapestry: Demonstrating the beautiful unity of mathematics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010. ISBN 0-521-12821-8Martin Arkowitz Cornell University 1960Imre Bokor Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich 1988Bryce Brogan Case Western Reserve University 1977Charles Cassidy Université Laval 1977Keith Hardie University of Cambridge 1958Robert Haas Case Western Reserve University 1977Paul Kainen Cornell University 1970Paulo Leite Universidade de São Paulo 1979Karl Lorensen Binghamton University 1997Robert Militello Binghamton University 1991Irwin Pressman Carleton University 1965Vidhyanath Rao Case Western Reserve University 1981Heather Ries Binghamton University 1992Dirk Scevenels Katholieke Universiteit Leuven 1995Christopher Schuck Binghamton University 1992Chia-Hui Shih Kuo Cornell University 1964Johnnie Slagle University of Washington 1973Michael Stewart University of Washington 1973Changchao Su Binghamton University 2000Yel-Chiang Wu Cornell University 1967S. Yahya University of Birmingham 1962
