Person: Brown (4), Gavin

Gavin Brown was a Scottish harmonic and functional analyst who moved to Australia. He became Principal of the University of Sydney.

Gavin was Dux of Madras College in 1959, his final year at the school and, after sitting the Bursary Examination of the University of St Andrews, was awarded a Harkness Scholarship (the most prestigious of the University of St Andrews entrance scholarships).
Brown then undertook postgraduate work at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the north of England supported financially by a Carnegie Scholarship.
Brown's first paper Relatively type 0 semi-algebras, based on the work of his doctoral thesis, was published in 1967.
After being Head of the Department of Pure Mathematics and then Head of the School of Mathematics, Brown became Dean of the Faculty of Science of the University of New South Wales in 1989.
In 1992 Brown moved to the University of Adelaide as Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) and then in January 1994 he became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Adelaide.
Professor Brown was also very active in national and regional committees during his time at the University.
On 1 July 1996 Brown became Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Sydney, a post he held until retirement in 2008.
For example during his ten-year period in Sydney, from 1996 to 2005, Brown published around 30 papers.
In addition to the honours we have mentioned above, Brown has received honorary degrees from the University of St Andrews (1997) and the University of Dundee (2004).
In January 2006 Brown was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia.

Born 27 February 1942, Lundin Links, Fife, Scotland. Died 25 December 2010, Adelaide, Australia.

View full biography at MacTutor

Origin Scotland

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

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