About

This webpage was initiated by Professor David Lewis from University College Dublin, a Manx pure mathematician who took the trouble to keep a record of the mathematical community with Manx heritage and continued by myself, Andreas Kyprianou. Of Manx heritage myself (see below), it is my honour to have become the custodian of this webpage. David sadly passed away in August 2021, but his wishes to represent Manx mathematics will continue here. Below is a list, in alphabetical order, of mathematicians who are either natives of the Isle of Man or members of the Manx diaspora, largely compiled by David, with more recent additions and updates added by myself.

Any suggestions for additions to this list are welcome. Anyone in mathematics (pure or applied), mathematical physics, statistics, history of mathematics, or any other discipline using mathematics will be included provided they can show a legitimate connection with the Isle of Man. Please email Andreas Kyprianou. Apologies if some of the links are now out of date.

Those interested in mathematics and the Isle of Man may also wish to visit the Facebook group of the Isle of Man Mathematical Society. 

Manx Mathematicians

• Keith Austin, Pure Mathematics Section, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sheffield, England. Born in Cheshire but of Manx extraction on his fathers side. Semi-retired but still lecturing in Mathematical Education in Sheffield. Mathematical interests - teaching and learning of undergraduate mathematics, mathematical proof.

• Ruth Bowness. Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Bath. Born in Merseyside but moved to the Isle of Man at the age of 10. Lived in Port Erin and went to Castle Rushen High School until 2001, then studied in St. Andrew's University to PhD, and a MRC research fellow thereafter. Moved to University of Bath in 2020. Mathematical interests - modelling techniques to model infectious disease spread within the body.

• Jessica Bridson, Department of Statistics and Applied Mathematics, University of Strathclyde, Scotland. Canadian from Newfoundland, of Manx ancestry. Mathematical interests - statistics, population modelling.

• Martin R. Bridson Whitehead Professor of Pure Mathematics, University of Oxford. Previously at Dept. of  Mathematics, Imperial College, University of London, England. Manx-born. Native of Douglas. Educated at Douglas High School. Mathematical interests - geometic group theory, topology

• Robert Bridson, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Stanford University, California, U.S.A. Canadian from Newfoundland, brother of Jessica and so also of Manx descent. Mathematical interests - scientific computing, applied mathematics.

• Abigail Burdon (née Verschueren). Born in Manchester but moved to the island at age 10. Educated at St. Ninian’s High School in Douglas, University of Sheffield (undergraduate) and University of Bath (PhD). Postdoc at the University of Cambridge. Mathematical interests – medical statistics, design and analysis of clinical trials.

• Quentin L. Burrell.  Formerly of Statistical Laboratory, Dept. of Mathematics, University of Manchester, England, now Senior Lecturer in Quantitatve Studies, Isle of Man International Business School. Blackpool-born but moved to the island at age 9. Educated at Douglas High School and Manchester University. Recently retired from position of Senior Lecturer in Manchester and now back living on the island. Chairman of Isle of Man Mathematical Society. Mathematical interests - stochastic modelling in informetrics, mixtures of Poisson and other counting processes

• Charles A. Caine. Manx-born and educated. Mathematical physicist who spent his career at University of Oxford, England, as a Fellow and Tutor in Mathematics. He is now  retired and still living in Oxford.

• Mary Cannell, (1913-2000). Born and educated in Liverpool of Manx parentage (father from Kirkmichael). She is included as a historian of mathematics, having written the definitive biography of George Green, (famous for Greens theorem and Greens functions) - George Green : Mathematician and Physicist 1793-1841, published by the Athlone Press, London and Atlantic Highlands N.J. (1993). The second edition is being published in winter 2000 according to S.I.A.M. News. She is included in the St. Andrews History of Mathematics web page. The George Green Memorial Fund is setting up  a Mary Cannell Memorial Scholarship. The criteria for the award will vary from year to year but the main thrust will be directed towards the greater understanding by young people of scientific principles and their application.

• James W. Cannon, Department of Mathematics, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, U.S.A. Great-great grandfather George Cannon and wife Angela left Peel in the first half of the 19-th century and went to Liverpool where they joined the Mormon Church. They then emigrated to the U.S. and their children crossed the plains to Utah in the Mormon migration led by Brigham Young in the 1850s. Mathematical  interests - geometric group theory.

• Lawrence O. Cannon, Department of Mathematics, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, U.S.A/ Brother of James W.Cannon and hence of the same Manx lineage. Mathematical interests - topology, algebra.

• Michael J. Cannon, Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. Son of James W.Cannon and hence of  the same Manx lineage. Mathematical  interests - epidemiologist who uses a good deal of applied statistics in his work.

• Jonathan N.L. Connor, Dept. of Chemistry, University of Manchester, England. Born in Douglas  with relatives in Santon. Educated mainly off the island. Mathematical interests - he is Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at Manchester where he applies a considerable amount of  abstract mathematics and numerical analysis to practical problems involving the dynamics of atoms and molecules.

• Bruce Cooil, Owen Graduate School, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, U.S.A. Born in Honolulu. His great-grandfather emigrated from the island while still in his teens. Mathematical  interests - latent class models for marketing and medical research, methods for evaluating qualitative data reliability, large sample estimation theory and extreme value theory.

• Steve Cowin (Stephen Corteen Cowin), Professor, New York Center for Biomedical Engineering, Departments of Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering, City College of New York (CCNY)  of the City University of New York (CUNY). Grandfather and father born in Douglas, grandmother (née Burrows) born in Castletown. Grandparents married in Kirk Malew in 1888. Mathematical interests - Continuum mechanics, Biomechanics, Biomathematics.

• Robert E. Craine, Faculty of Mathematical Studies, University of Southampton, England. Manx-born. Educated at Castle Rushen High School and Manchester University Mathematical interests - industrial applied mathematics, welding, modelling creep and failure of welded plates and pipes using Cosserat theory, stability of flows in weldpools, cerebral blood flow - autoregulation.

• Warren J. Ewens, Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Grandmother was Amy Qualtrough. Her father left the Isle of Man in the 1870s for South Australia. Mathematical interests - mathematical population genetics, applied in evolution and also in human disease genetics.

• Ben Fairfax,  WebCab Components, Douglas, Isle of Man. Founder, Director and Owner of WebCab Components Ltd. WebCab Components develops mathematical and financial software components, and so Ben can be described as doing applied research within mathematics. Active Private Investor for own and third party funds. Lives in Douglas but originally  from the U.K. BSc and PhD in Mathematics from London University, UK, Cert Advanced Study of Mathematics from Cambridge University,  UK., visiting position in MIT, Massachusetts, USA.

• Brian Faragher, Senior Lecturer, Organisational Psychology and Health Research Group, School of Management, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology,, United Kingdom. Manx born, native of Onchan, educated at Douglas High School for Boys, Liverpool University, University College Wales (Aberystwyth). Mathematical interests - medical statistics and epidemiology, with particular interest in the effects of work on health.

• Thomas Hales Professor, University of Pittsburgh, USA. An American citizen, Thomas is grandson Thomas Leonard Callister, a Manxman. Educated at Princeton, he has previously worked at the University of Michigan. Mathematical interests - representation theory, discrete geometry, formal representation. Thomas is known for his proofs of the Kepler conjecture and the honeycomb conjecture. He has won multiple awards and became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012.

• Catherine Hobbs UWE, Bristol. Has worked at Nottingham, Oxford Brookes, Auckland, Bristol and currently elected as Vice-President of the London Mathematical Society in 2017 and 2018. Bristol-born but of Manx ancestry on her father's side. Mathematical interests - applications of singularity theory, cryptography.

• John G.Hocking, Emeritus Professor, Michigan State University, East Lansing, U.S.A. His grandmother came from the Isle of Man. I have no more details on his Manx ancestry. Mathematical interests - topology. Co-author with Gail S. Young of a famous textbook, Topology, Addison-Wesley 1961.

• John Karran. From Port St.Mary. He did a maths degree and a Ph.D in mathematics at  Manchester University in the early 1960s and then had an academic career in the midlands of England. Currently living in the Coventry area.

• Mark Kermode, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Liverpool, England. Born in Liverpool with a Manx grandfather. Research interests - alpha-decay of deformed nuclei. Chair of Board of Studies in Mathematics and Computing, Liverpool University, 1996-1999.

• Andreas E. Kyprianou, Department of Statistics, University of Warwick. Born and raised in Manchester. Educated at Oxford University (BA) and Sheffield University (PhD). Mathematical interests - Probability theory, stochastic processes with jumps. Despite a seemingly Cypriot name, Andreas' mother (née Voirrey Blackett, and born to a line of Quilliams) is Manx from Peel. His mother came to Manchester with a scholarship in the 1960s to study Mathematics and Philosophy at Manchester University, ultimately becoming a mathematics teacher at some of Manchester's inner city schools.

• David W. Lewis, Department of Mathematics, University College Dublin, Ireland. Manx-born. Native of Douglas. Educated at Douglas High School and  Liverpool University. Mathematical interests - quadratic and hermitian forms, algebras with involution. David sadly passed away in August 2021.

• Jon Pridham, Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge, U.K. Manchester-born,but moved to the Island aged 10, educated at K.W.C. Mathematical interests - algebraic geometry and algebraic topology.

• Jack Quine Department of Mathematics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 3206, U.S.A.Great-grandfather was a merchant seaman born in  the Isle of Man and who emigrated to Ohio when young. Same lineage as W.V.O.Quine (see below). Mathematical  interests - zeta regularized products, Riemann surfaces, mathematical biophysics.

• Malcolm Quine, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney, Australia. Born in England (Burton-on-Trent) but with a Manx grandfather. Mathematical interests - mathematical statistics and applied probability (including stochastic geometry)

• Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) Famous Harvard logician and philosopher, born 1908, died 25 Dec 2000. The Quine family web page traces back  the Quine genealogy for ten generations, six of them in the Isle of Man. The grandfatherof Willard Quine emigrated from Andreas to the U.S.A around about  1870 and his forebears lived in Onchan, Malew, and Ballafargher.

• Peter Renton, Department of Physics, University of Oxford. Was born in the IOM, lived in Port Erin, and went to Castle Rushen High School. Studied Physics at Liverpool Uni all the way to PhD. Then Worked in Particle Physics at CERN, then at Brussels University and finally to Oxford University, where he became Professor. Retired around 2011.

• David B. Skillicorn, Department of Computing and Information Science, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. From Australia but now working in Canada. His ancestors emigrated from the Isle of Man to Australia in about 1845. Mathematical interests - high-performance computing , data mining

• Brian Trustrum (1934-2019), Mathematics Department, University of Sussex, applied mathematician Manx-born. Native of Port Erin and moved back after retirement from University of Sussex. He was the the driving force behind the formation of the recently-founded Isle of Man Mathematical Society. Mathematical interests - analysis, probability. Brian passed away peacefully aged 84 on Friday 6th December 2019 at Abbotswood Nursing Home, Ballasalla. Obituaries can be found in the Sussex former faculty news letter and Isle of Man Today.

• Kathleen Trustrum, formerly of Mathematics Department , University of Sussex Wife of Brian, so Manx by marriage! Mathematical interests- fluid mechanics, statistics.

• Geoff Watterson (Ph.D., Aust. Nat. Univ.) is a mathematical geneticist, now retired, but  formerly of the Mathematics Department, Monash University, Victoria, Australia. His interests are mainly in the stochastic processes of genetic evolution, particularly the Wright-Fisher model, and Kimura's theory of neutral mutation theory. Geoff's paternal grandfather, Samuel Faragher Watterson, was born in the Isle of Man and christened at Kirk Christ, Rushen, on 1 August 1851. Samuel, his mother Janet, her siblings, and her mother Margaret Watterson migrated to Australia in subsequent years.

• Peter Watterson, Faculty of Engineeering, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. Son of Geoff Watterson, so has the same Manx ancestry. For a Ph.D. at Cambridge University, Peter Watterson solved non-linear partial differential equations related to fusion enegy magnetohydrodynamics. Since 1990 he has worked in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Technology, Sydney using optimization methods and Maxwell's equations to design electric motors, especially for artificial hearts.

• Ian Watterson, CSIRO Atmospheric Research, Melbourne, Australia. Son of Geoff Watterson, so has  same Manx ancestry. BSc (Melbourne), PhD (Harvard) in applied mathematics/meteorology. Works in the  numerical modelling of climate and the analysis of climate change and weather patterns.

• Ray Watterson. Related to Geoff Watterson.. Ray's great-grandfather was Thomas Henry Watterson (born about 1850  in the Isle of Man and married in Maryborough, Victoria in 1872). Family moved on from gold mining in Maryborough, Victoria to building and construction. Ray has taught Mathematics Physics . Electronic and Design Technology in Victoria secondary schools  since leaving Monash University in 1975.

• Samuel Watterson. Son of Ray Watterson. Samuel is working as a computer systems business analyst since leaving Deakin Univsersity where his research projects were in distributed computing and mathematical modelling  processes of search engines.

• Steven Watterson, School of Mathematics, Trinity College , Dublin , Ireland. Manx born. Native of Castletown. Educated at Castle Rushen High School, Edinburgh University and Trinity College Dublin. Works in  lattice field theory and spinor algebras