Fellow professors join Royal Society of Edinburgh

Three Strathclyde professors have been elected as the University’s newest recruits to the prestigious Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Fellowship honours, in recognition of outstanding achievement, have been bestowed by the society on Professor Iain Stewart, of the Department of Mathematics, and Professor Xuerong Mao, of the Department of Statistics and Modelling Sciences (STAMS). Robin Hochstrasser, Visiting Professor of Physics, is one of three recipients of the Honorary Fellowship accolade.

In all, more than 60 experts have this week received the accolade of Fellowship of the RSE.

Professor Stewart is a leading authority in the mathematical theory and applications of liquid crystals. He has written more than 80 publications and is the author of the book The Static and Dynamic Contiuum Theory of Liquid Crystals.

Professor Mao specializes in the stochastic equation field of probability theory. He took a Masters Degree at China Textile University and lectured in the Department of Management at Fuzhou University in China for five years. He gained a Doctorate from the University of Warwick’s Mathematics Institute before joining STAMS at Strathclyde in 1992. He was promoted to Reader three years later and was made a Professor in 1998.

Professor Hochstrasser is currently Visiting Professor to the Biomolecular and Chemical Physics Group at Strathclyde. He is the Donner Professor of Physical Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been based for more than 40 years.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh is an independent educational charity with 1,400 fellows who are experts of national and international standing, representing excellence across the subject disciplines.

RSE President Sir Michael Atiyah said awards had been made by the Society to people who were “recognized as amongst the best minds in Scotland and around the world.”