Alexander Craig Aitken, 1895-1967

Alexander Craig Aitken was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, on 1 April 1895, the eldest of the seven children of William and Elizabeth Aitken. His father was one of the fourteen children of Alexander Aitken, of a farming family in Lanarkshire, who had emigrated to Otago in 1868 and had small farms in West Taieri, near Dunedin. However, his second son, Aitken’s father left the farm to work as a grocer in Dunedin and finally acquired the business. Aitken did not know so much about his mother, except that her maiden name was Towers and that she was born in Wolverhampton and came to New Zealand at the age of eight. In 1908 Aitken gained a scholarship to Otago Boys’ High School in Dunedin. He became Dux in 1912 and won a Junior University Scholarship to Otago University in 1913, being first on this list by a considerable margin. As yet it was by no means clear what course would be best suited to his unusual combination of talents. Gifted with a phenomenal memory— years afterwards he could recite whole books of Virgil—he had shown at least as much promise in classics as in mathematics. In the event he took a course combining languages with mathematics.