David Gawen Champernowne (9 July 1912 - 19 August 2000) was Professor of Statistical Economics at Oxford (1948 -1959), and professor of Economics and Statistics at Cambridge (1970-2000). He published work on Champernowne's Number in 1933, while still an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge.

After academic work at Cambridge and the London School of Economics, he worked in the Prime Minister's Statistical department to supply quantitative information to help Winston Churchill make decisions. However, he did not get on well with the department head Frederick Lindemann and, in 1941, he moved on to become a programme director in the Ministry of Aircraft Production.

Working with an old college friend Alan Turing in 1948, he helped develop one of the first chess-playing computer programs.

The book for which he is most renowned, synthesising a life's work, Economic Inequality and Income Distribution (Cambridge University Press), was published in 1998.

His co-editors at the Economic Journal found him to be "modest, quirky and humorous". (Obituary - Guardian 1 Sept 2000, p18.)

His grave is at the new Church at Dartington, Devon, built by his family in the 1870s to replace the ancient Church at Dartington Hall, the family seat.

See also obituaries: Times 25 August 2003, p 23 ; Independent 26 August 2000, p7.

fr:D. G. Champernowne

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