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Person: Adamson, Iain Thomas Arthur Carpenter
Iain Adamson was a Scottish mathematician who worked in algebra and published several widely appreciated text-books.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Iain's secondary education was at Morgan Academy in Dundee and, in 1945, he graduated as Dux of the Academy.
- After graduating from the University of St Andrews, Adamson went to Princeton University in the United States where he undertook research in algebra supervised by Emil Artin.
- Also in 1967, Queen's College became the new University of Dundee and Iain automatically changed from being employed by the University of St Andrews to being a lecturer in the University of Dundee.
- We will look at other aspects of Adamson's life later in this biography, but first we want to look at his greatest mathematical contribution which was as a writer of textbooks.
- Adamson's first textbook was Introduction to field theory (1964).
- Adamson's next book Rings, modules and algebras (1971) was again in his own specialist area of algebra.
- Adamson turned to analysis for his next textbook Elementary mathematical analysis (1975).
- From the information given above of Adamson's three papers on teaching elementary analysis, we could guess that his approach in this book would be innovative; indeed it is.
- Perhaps the two most successfully innovative textbooks by Adamson are A general topology workbook (1996), and A set theory workbook (1998).
- Also in 1996, Adamson published Data structures and algorithms.
- We promised to return to what we can only describe as "another side" of Adamson's life.
- When the University of Dundee asked if members of staff would consider early retirement with part-time re-engagement, Adamson accepted the offer.
- Iain quickly became a well known and well respected Minister, especially in regard to pastoral care where his willingness to be a listener rather than a speaker endeared him to people with problems.
- In 2001 Iain and Robin Adamson decided to go to Australia and take up permanent residence in Nedlands.
Born 17 June 1928, Dundee, Scotland. Died 9 June 2010, Nedlands, WA, Australia.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Scotland
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
