Early Life
He was born in the coal-mining village of Newstead, Nottinghamshire, the only child of mineworker and former coalminer William Henstock and Mary Ellen Henstock (née Bancroft). On the Henstock side he was descended from 17th century Flemish immigrants called Hemstok.
Because of his early academic promise it was expected that Henstock would attend Nottingham University where his father and uncle had received technical education, but as it turned out he won scholarships which enabled him to study mathematics at St John's College, Cambridge from October 1941 until November 1943, when he was sent for war service to the Ministry of Supply’s department of Statistical Method and Quality Control in London.
This work did not satisfy him, so he enrolled at Birkbeck College, London where he joined the weekly seminar of Professor Paul Dienes which was then a focus for mathematical activity in London. Henstock wanted to study divergent series but Dienes prevailed upon him to get involved in the theory of integration, thereby setting him on course for his life’s work.
A devoted Methodist, the lasting impression he made was one of gentle sincerity and amiability. Henstock married Marjorie Jardine in 1949. Their son John was born July 10, 1952. Ralph Henstock died on January 17, 2007 after a short illness.
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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