A. Y. G. Campbell

Sir Archibald Young Gipps Campbell KCIE CSI CBE (May 18, 1872 – October 30, 1957) was an Indian civil servant who served as the Law member of the executive council of the Governor of Madras from 1926 to 1928 and Chief Secretary of Madras 1925–1935 and made an important contribution towards the founding of Red Cross Food Parcels in the First World War. Early life Archibald Young Gipps Campbell was born in Brighton, England, on May 18, 1872. His father, Archibald Samuels Campbell (1821–1899), had been a Fellow of mathematics at St John's College, Cambridge before going out to Jamaica where the family owned a number of plantations. He returned to England and married Alice Gipps (died 1932) in 1871 at the age of 50 and had three sons (Archibald, Allan, and William) and two daughters (Alice a.k.a. Hilda; and Mary a.k.a. Daisy). Archibald Young Gipps Campbell was the eldest child. Archilbald Samuel Campbell retired to Cambridge and died there in 1899. An obituary appeared in the Eagle, the St John's College magazine, the following year. Campbell was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He inherited his father's talent for mathematics: he won a scholarship to Trinity, where he went on to become a Smith's Prizeman and Tyson Medallist. He passed out 9th in the Mathematical Tripos, and particularly distinguishing himself for his work in cosmology. His undergraduate dissertation on the "Theory of the Composition of the Stars" was outstanding, and on the strength of it, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a member of the Société astronomique de France (French Astronomical Society). Sir Robert Ball, then Lowndean Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, included his work in his lectures and described him as one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his time. Early career The Indian Civil Service was an attractive proposition for the brightest Cambridge graduates in the 1890s. Archibald sat the examinations on graduation in 1895 and came second, only being beaten by Julius Mathison Turing, father of the famous Alan Turing FRS (the cryptologist who led the team who broke the Enigma code at Bletchley Park in the Second World War). Alan Turing's biography mentions that his father was always bitter that Archibald Campbell had been promoted more quickly than he had when they were in India.