Prof Ian Naismith Sneddon FRS^[1] FRSE FIMA OBE (8 December 1919 Glasgow, Scotland – 4 November 2000 Glasgow, Scotland) was a Scottish mathematician who worked on analysis and applied mathematics.^[3][4]

Life

Sneddon was born in Glasgow on 8 December 1919, the son of Mary Ann Cameron and Naismith Sneddon. He was educated at Hyndland School in Glasgow.^[5]

He studied mathematics and physics at the University of Glasgow, graduating with a BSc. He then went to the University of Cambridge, gaining an MA in 1941. From 1942 to 1945, during World War II, he served as a Scientific Officer to the Ministry of Supply. After the war he worked as a Research Officer for H H Wills Laboratory at the University of Bristol. In 1946, he began lecturing in Natural Philosophy (physics) at the University of Glasgow.^[6]

In 1950, he received a professorship at University College, North Staffordshire. In 1956, he returned to the University of Glasgow as Professor of Mathematics.

In 1958, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Robert Alexander Rankin, Philip Ivor Dee, William Marshall Smart and Edward Copson. He won the Society's Makdougall-Brisbane Prize for the period 1956-58. In 1983, he was further elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.^[7][1]

He retired in 1985, and died in Glasgow on 4 November 2000.

Family

In 1943, he married Mary Campbell Macgregor.

Research

Sneddon's research was published widely including:

• with Nevill Mott: Wave mechanics and its applications, 1948
• Fourier transforms, 1951^[8]
• Special functions of mathematical physics and chemistry, 1956^[9]
• Elements of partial differential equations, 1957^[10]
• with James George Defares: An introduction to the mathematics of medicine and biology, 1960^[11]
• Mixed boundary problems in potential theory, 1966
• Lectures on transform methods, 1967
• with Morton Lowengrub: Crack problems in the classical theory of elasticity, 1969
• The use of integral transforms, 1972
• The linear theory of thermoelasticity, 1974
• Encyclopaedic dictionary of mathematics for engineers and applied scientists, 1976
• The use of operators of fractional integration in applied mathematics, 1979
• with E. L. Ince: The solution of ordinary differential equations, 1987

Awards and honours

Sneddon received Honorary Doctorates from Warsaw University (1973), Heriot-Watt University (1982)^[12] University of Hull (1983) and University of Strathclyde (1984).

References