Dodgson

Dodgson is an English surname. It is a patronymic from the given name Dod or Dodd, meaning 'son of Dod/Dodd'.

Notable people bearing the name include Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898), who wrote under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. He was an English writer, mathematician, and photographer. Born in Daresbury, Cheshire, Dodgson studied and later lectured in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford. He published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871), works celebrated for wordplay, invention, and linguistic whimsy. In mathematics he contributed to logic, geometry, and combinatorics, and he produced texts such as The Symbolic Logic (1893). His photography, especially Victorian portraits, is also noted as part of his literary and cultural legacy.

Dodgson condensation, or Dodgson's method, is a determinant evaluation technique devised by Dodgson. The algorithm condenses a matrix by forming successive smaller determinants until a single value remains. While elegant, it can encounter division-by-zero issues and is not robust for general numerical computation, so it is primarily of historical interest in linear algebra.

Beyond Carroll, the surname is borne by various individuals in Britain and elsewhere, and Dodgson has occasionally appeared in place names and fictional references tied to Carroll's works.