As an undergraduate during World War II, Atkin worked at Bletchley Park cracking German codes.
[1] He received his Ph.D. in 1952 from the University of Cambridge, where he was one of John Littlewood's research students.
Toward the end of his life, he was Professor Emeritus of mathematics at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Atkin is also known for his work on properties of the integer partition function and the monster module.
"[4] Atkin died of nosocomial pneumonia on 28 December 2008, in Maywood, Illinois.