Ronald Brown Trusted member

Professor

Bangor University, Computer Science, Bangor, UK

Biography & Interests

Born 4 January, 1935 in London. I studied Mathematics at Oxford 1953-1956, 1st class Honours, and postgraduate there 1956-59, supervised by J.H.C. Whitehead. Assistant Lecturer and then Lecturer, Liverpool University, 1959-64, Senior Lecturer and then Reader, Hull University, 1964-70, Professor of Pure Mathematics, Bangor University, 1970-1999, then Emeritus Professor. Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow, 2002-2004. My PhD research under Michael Barratt, after the death of Whitehead in 1960, was on the algebraic topology of function spaces. This led to results on the general topology of function spaces, including the notion of `convenient category of spaces' and an early interest in what are now known as monoidal closed categories. Work on a topology text published in 1968 led to an interest in groupoids, and then higher homotopy groupoids, particularly in collaboration with Philip Higgins, and later Jean-Louis Loday.

I am now concluding work on `Nonabelian algebraic topology: filtered spaces, crossed complexes, cubical homotopy groupoids' as European Math. Soc. Tract vol 15, in collaboration with P.J. Higgins and R. Sivera. I have long been interested in teaching