Alexander Macfarlane

Who was Alexander Macfarlane?

Alexander Macfarlane FRSE was a Scottish logician, physicist, and mathematician.

Macfarlane was born in Blairgowrie, Scotland and studied at the University of Edinburgh. His doctoral thesis "The disruptive discharge of electricity" reported on experimental results from the laboratory of Peter Guthrie Tait. In 1878 Macfarlane was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

During his life, Macfarlane played a prominent role in research and education. He taught at the universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews, was physics professor at the University of Texas, professor of Advanced Electricity, and later of mathematical physics, at Lehigh University. MacFarlane was the secretary of the Quaternion Society and compiler of its publications.

Macfarlane was also the author of a popular 1916 collection of mathematical biographies, a similar work on physicists, and he compiled a bibliography on quaternions in 1904. Macfarlane was caught up in the revolution in geometry during his lifetime, in particular through the influence of G. B. Halsted who was mathematics professor at the University of Texas.