Edward McWilliam Patterson,

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...

(30 July 1926 – 5 April 2013) was an English mathematician. He was born in Whitby, North Yorkshire, the son of parents from Northern Ireland, and educated at the local Lady Lumley's school and

Leeds University The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884, it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed ...

, where he graduated B.Sc in mathematics and was awarded a Ph.D. on the subject of

differential geometry Differential geometry is a Mathematics, mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of Calculus, single variable calculus, vector calculus, lin ...

. From 1959 to 1951 he was a demonstrator at

Sheffield University The University of Sheffield (informally Sheffield University or TUOS) is a public research university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Its history traces back to the foundation of Sheffield Medical School in 1828, Firth College in 1879 ...

before moving to

St Andrews St Andrews (; ; , pronounced ʰʲɪʎˈrˠiː.ɪɲ is a town on the east coast of Fife in Scotland, southeast of Dundee and northeast of Edinburgh. St Andrews had a recorded population of 16,800 , making it Fife's fourth-largest settleme ...

in to take up a post as lecturer for five years. After three further years as a lecturer in Leeds, he returned to Scotland in 1959 as a senior lecturer at the

University of Aberdeen The University of Aberdeen (abbreviated ''Aberd.'' in List of post-nominal letters (United Kingdom), post-nominals; ) is a public university, public research university in Aberdeen, Scotland. It was founded in 1495 when William Elphinstone, Bis ...

. The same year he was elected a fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...

. In 1965 he was made professor of mathematics at Aberdeen and in 1974 became head of department, a position he held alternately with Professor John Hubbuck until his retirement in 1989. From 1981 to 1984 he also served as dean of science. His mathematical work was originally geometry-based, and he published a textbook entitled ''Topology'' in 1956. He later switched to algebra, especially ring theory and

Lie algebra In mathematics, a Lie algebra (pronounced ) is a vector space \mathfrak g together with an operation called the Lie bracket, an alternating bilinear map \mathfrak g \times \mathfrak g \rightarrow \mathfrak g, that satisfies the Jacobi ident ...

, and published two textbooks, ''Elementary Abstract Algebra'' in 1965, in collaboration with Professor Dan Rutherford, and ''Vector Algebra'' in 1968. He was awarded the

Makdougall Brisbane Prize The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...

by the Royal Society of Edinburgh for 1960–1962. He was president of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society from 1964 to 1965 and served as a councillor for The Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1966 to 1968. He also served on the council of The

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's Learned society, learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh ...

. He died in Aberdeen in 2013. He had married twice: firstly Joan Maddick, with whom he had a daughter, Christine and secondly, after her death, Elizabeth Hunter.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Patterson, Edward McWilliam 1926 births 2013 deaths People from Whitby Alumni of the University of Leeds British mathematicians Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh