Professor Emeritus of Pure Mathematics, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

B.Sc. (Hons 1, Edinburgh); M.Sc. (Newcastle-upon-Tyne); Dip. Ed. (Edinburgh).

D.Phil. and D.Sc. (Oxford).

Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand

Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

Born and brought up in Edinburgh, though I've lived in New Zealand for 35 years, I remain a proud Scot (and long-suffering supporter of Heart of Midlothian FC). I am a pure mathematician, though keenly interested in physics and mathematical economics, and have held academic posts at the University of Buckingham (1975–1989), the University of Waikato (1989–98), and the University of Canterbury (1999–2015). I retired from the last-named as Emeritus Professor in April 2015.

Vivien, my wife of 45 years, and I have three offspring - Iain, Hamish, and Catriona - and five grandchildren,  three of whom live in the Northern Hemisphere, two in Christchurch.

My main research interest lies in constructive analysis, topology, and logic; I've also published a book and several papers in mathematical (micro)economics.

My primary interests outside mathematics are:

• music: singing in choirs and listening, with particular love for the keyboard music of Schubert, Beethoven, and Bach. (If you were allowed one piece of music to listen to before your execution, what would you choose? I'd probably go for the andante of Schubert's String Quintet D956; but Beethoven's Op. 111 sonata, Schubert's D959 or D960 sonatas, and Bach's Goldberg Variations would run it pretty close.)
  
• sport: football, cricket, and tennis.
  
• reading: philosophy, physics, and theology; biography (especially of American Presidents); detective fiction. My favourite authors of English literature are Shakespeare and Joseph Conrad. But the greatest novels I have read are probably Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, Tolstoy's War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.
  

By the way, the photo at the top of this website is one of James Clerk Maxwell, a son of Edinburgh, one of my great intellectual heroes. The photo immediately above the text is taken looking over Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand, towards the mountains above Glenorchy.