Charles Henry Sims (28 January 1873, Islington – 13 April 1928, St. Boswells) was a British painter of portraits, landscapes, and decorative paintings. Apart from his mainstream reputation, he is also considered an exponent of Outsider Art, as an artist whose work developed an idiosyncratic style through psychiatric disorder.
Born in Islington, London, Sims was the son of a costume manufacturer. Initially apprenticed in the drapery business, he moved to art in 1890 and enrolled at the South Kensington College of Art, before moving to Paris for two years at the Académie Julian. In the need of bursaries to support himself, he moved back to London and enrolled at the Royal Academy School in 1893. In 1895 he was expelled.
In 1897 he married Agnes, a daughter of the painter John MacWhirter.
From 1896, he developed an increasingly successful career, first exhibiting The Vine at the Royal Academy in 1896, and selling another painting, Childhood to the Musée du Luxembourg. An expert at portraying sunlit landscapes, he specialised in society portraits and neo-classical fantasies, typically idealised scenes of women, children or fairies in outdoor settings.
Charles Sims may refer to:
Charles Coffin Sims is an American mathematician best known for his work in group theory. Together with Donald G. Higman he discovered the Higman–Sims group, one of the sporadic groups. The permutation group software developed by Sims also led to the proof of existence of the Lyons group (also known as Lyons–Sims group) and O'Nan group (also known as O'Nan–Sims group).
Sims was a student of John Thompson and received Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1963. In his thesis he enumerated p-groups, giving sharp asymptotic upper and lower bounds. Sims is one of the founders of computational group theory and is the eponym of the Schreier–Sims algorithm. He was a faculty member at the Department of Mathematics at Rutgers University from 1965 to 2007. During that period he had served, in particular, as Department Chair (1982–84) and Associate Provost for Computer Planning (1984–87). Sims retired from Rutgers in 2007 and currently resides in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Flight Lieutenant Charles John Sims DFC (20 December 1899 – 30 December 1929) was an English World War I flying ace credited with nine aerial victories. His most notable victory saw him shoot down an enemy aircraft that crashed into another, giving Sims a double win. However, his Distinguished Flying Cross was awarded for his courage in ground attack missions.
Charles John Sims was born in Bournemouth, England on 20 December 1899.
Sims entered the Royal Naval Air Service as a probationary flight officer with seniority from 24 October 1917. He was assigned to No. 13 (Naval) Squadron, which later became No. 213 Squadron RAF when the RNAS was merged with the Army's Royal Flying Corps to form the Royal Air Force on 1 April 1918. Flying a Sopwith Camel single-seat fighter he was diligent in trench strafing and ground support missions. He also scored nine aerial victories between 9 July and 9 November 1918, just before the end of hostilities. His most notable wins were on 25 September, when one Fokker D.VII he downed spun into a second, taking it out also; and his triple win on 14 October. His final tally was a balloon and four German aircraft destroyed solo, two shared with other pilots, and two driven down out of control.