Francis Guthrie was a South African mathematician who first posed the Four Colour Problem in 1852. At the time, Guthrie was a student of Augustus De Morgan at University College, London. While colouring a map of the counties of England, he noticed that at least four colours were required so that no two regions sharing a common border were the same colour. He postulated that four colors would be sufficient to colour any map. This became known as the Four Colour Problem, and remained one of the most famous unsolved problems in mathematics for more than a century, until it was eventually proven in 1976 using a controversial computer-aided proof.

Guthrie eventually moved to South Africa where he became a professor of mathematics at the South African College, which later became the University of Cape Town.

He was a keen amateur botanist, and three rare fynbos species from the Bredasdorp area were named after him: Cyrtanthus guthrieae, Gladiolous guthriei and Homoglossum guthriei

South African mathematicians | University of Cape Town academics

Francis Guthrie