◀ ▲ ▶History / 19th-century / Person: Macrobert, Thomas Murray

Person: Macrobert, Thomas Murray

Thomas MacRobert studied at Glasgow and Cambridge universities. He returned to Glasgow to a series of posts culminating in the professorship. He worked on Complex Analysis.

Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):

• The Rev MacRobert was a minister in the church at Dreghorn, a position he held for 57 years.
• The Rev MacRobert was also prominent in the Congregational Union and served as its President.
• MacRobert entered the University of Glasgow in 1901.
• After completing his undergraduate studies at Glasgow, MacRobert took the route many other leading Scots took at that time and followed his degree from a Scottish University with a degree at Cambridge.
• MacRobert spent his whole career at Glasgow.
• From the description above it is clear that MacRobert was appointed to Glasgow without having undertaken research.
• We should say something of MacRobert's involvement with three Scottish societies; the Edinburgh Mathematical Society, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Glasgow Mathematical Association.
• After much discussion and changes in proposed publication strategy by the Society, MacRobert finally resigned from the Committee early in 1931 and later that year he withdrew Glasgow's invitation to hold meetings of the Society there.
• No further meetings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society took place in Glasgow until after MacRobert retired.
• MacRobert was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 7 March 1921 proposed by George Alexander Gibson, Andrew Gray, James Gordon Gray, and Robert Alexander Houstoun.
• The third society that MacRobert was involved with was the Glasgow Mathematical Association of which he was a founder member.
• We have said little so far about MacRobert's mathematics.
• The EEE-function was a generalisation of the generalised hypergeometric functions, and from 1938 onwards MacRobert produced a whole series of works on the properties of the EEE-function and integrals with EEE-functions.
• To read MacRobert's own description of the EEE-function we refer the reader to the fourth edition of his Functions of a complex variable (1954).
• MacRobert published four further papers (in addition to the above) in 1959, five in 1960, three in 1961 and three in 1962 which was the year of his death.
• Not only Glasgow students received MacRobert's willing help; many mathematicians overseas, whose researches followed the lines of his work, benefited greatly from his advice, and he gave them generous help, particularly in the preparation of the manuscripts of their papers for publication in British journals.

Born 4 April 1884, Dreghorn, Ayrshire, Scotland. Died 1 November 1962, Glasgow, Scotland.

View full biography at MacTutor

Tags relevant for this person:

Origin Scotland

Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0!

Github:

non-Github:

@J-J-O'Connor

@E-F-Robertson

References

Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:

1. O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive