Du Val's early work before becoming a research student was on relativity, including a paper on the
De Sitter model of the universe and
Grassmann's tensor calculus. His doctorate was on algebraic geometry and in his thesis he generalised a result of
Schoute. He worked on
algebraic surfaces and later in his career became interested in
elliptic functions. He received his
Ph.D. with a thesis entitled 'On Certain Configurations of Algebraic Geometry Having Groups of Self-Transformations Representable by Symmetry Groups of Certain Polygons' under Baker's supervision in 1930. While a research student he had many famous geometers including
Hodge as fellow research students, and he formed a particular friendship with
Coxeter and
Semple. He was elected a fellow of Trinity in 1930 for four years. During that time he travelled extensively, visiting
Rome and working with
Federigo Enriques, then in 1934
Princeton University, where he attended lectures by
James W. Alexander,
Luther P. Eisenhart,
Solomon Lefschetz,
Oswald Veblen,
Joseph Wedderburn, and
Hermann Weyl. In 1936, Du Val took up an assistant lectureship in the
Mathematics Department at
Manchester, where he stayed for five years. He was then funded by a
British Council scheme to go to
Istanbul University as a professor of pure mathematics. There he learnt
Turkish and even wrote a book on coordinate geometry in that language. After a spell in the
United States at the
University of Georgia, he returned to the
United Kingdom, first taking up a post in
Bristol, then at the
University College London in 1954, where he remained until he retired in 1970. Together with Semple he led the London Geometry Seminar during the time he spent in London. Du Val had three children. ==Later life==