Alexander Murray MacBeath
Alexander Murray MacBeath was a Scottish mathematician who worked on Riemann surfaces. MacBeath surfaces and MacBeath regions are named after him.
Early life and education
MacBeath was the son of Alexander MacBeath, a philosopher and logician who took a position at Queen's University Belfast in 1925, soon after Murray was born. Murray also studied at Queen's University, earning a B.A. with honours in 1943.During World War II, he worked in Hut 7 of the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, breaking ciphers used for military communications by the Japanese navy and, later, the army.
He earned an M.A. from Clare College, Cambridge in 1948. With a Commonwealth Fund fellowship, he then attended Princeton University, where he earned his Ph.D. on "The Geometry of Non-Homogeneous Lattices" in 1950 under the supervision of Emil Artin.
Career
He taught at Keele University and the University of Dundee before moving to the University of Birmingham in 1963 where he stayed until 1979 as Mason Professor, then moved back to the University of Pittsburgh in the United States until he reached their statutory retirement age of 60.He subsequently took up a position at the University of Dundee where he remained for a number of years, before moving to Warwickshire where at the University of Warwick he held the position of Emeritus Professor of Mathematics.