health deteriorated while at Changi Camp and was frequently seriously ill. His involvement at the informal university was interrupted when he was transferred to work on the Siam–Burma Railway. University administration and later life From 1945 to 1949, he resumed his position as a Professor in Mathematics at Raffles College. In 1947, he was the deputy principal, acting principal, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts. Oppenheim played a key role in the 1949 merger of Raffles College with King Edward VII College of Medicine to form the University of Malaya. He was appointed acting Vice-Chancellor in 1955 and then Vice-Chancellor in 1957, and remained in that position until his retirement in 1965. During his time as Vice-Chancellor, he oversaw the establishment of the new Kuala Lumpur campus of the university. After leaving the University of Malaya, Oppenheim served as visiting professor at the University of Reading until 1968. At the invitation of Alexander Kwapong, he taught at the University of Ghana from 1968 to 1973. He then served as the head of the mathematics department at the University of Benin in Nigeria until 1977, when he retired. He lived in Henley-on-Thames until his death there on 13 December 1997 at the age of 94. Research Oppenheim's most important works were in the theory of quadratic forms. In 1929, he proposed the Oppenheim conjecture about representations of numbers by real quadratic forms in several variables. Personal life Oppenheim married Beatrice Templer Nesbit (d. 1990) in 1930. They had one daughter and dissolved their marriage in 1977. In 1982, he married Margaret Ng, with whom he had two sons. Honours In 1955, Oppenheim became an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Oppenheim was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1956. He was knighted in 1961. In 1962, he was conferred the Malayan title of Dato and became an Honorary Commander of the Order of the Defender of the Realm (Panglima Mangku Negara). Selected publications References Further reading External links Biographical Summary An obituary Oppenheim Lectures at the National University of Singapore 1903 births 1997 deaths 20th-century English mathematicians Number theorists Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford University of Chicago alumni Knights Bachelor People from Salford World War II prisoners of war held by Japan People educated at Manchester Grammar School Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Officers of the Order of the British Empire Vice-chancellors