Francis Sowerby Macaulay FRS (11 February 1862,

Witney Witney is a market town on the River Windrush in West Oxfordshire in the county of Oxfordshire, England. It is west of Oxford. The place-name "Witney" is derived from the Old English for "Witta's island". The earliest known record of it is as ...

– 9 February 1937,

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

mathematician who made significant contributions to

algebraic geometry Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics, classically studying zeros of multivariate polynomials. Modern algebraic geometry is based on the use of abstract algebraic techniques, mainly from commutative algebra, for solving geometrical ...

. He is known for his 1916 book ''The Algebraic Theory of Modular Systems'' (an old term for ideals), which greatly influenced the later course of commutative algebra.

Cohen–Macaulay ring In mathematics, a Cohen–Macaulay ring is a commutative ring with some of the algebro-geometric properties of a smooth variety, such as local equidimensionality. Under mild assumptions, a local ring is Cohen–Macaulay exactly when it is a fini ...

s, Macaulay duality, the Macaulay resultant and the Macaulay and

Macaulay2 Macaulay2 is a free computer algebra system created by Daniel Grayson (from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign) and Michael Stillman (from Cornell University) for computation in commutative algebra and algebraic geometry. Overvi ...

computer algebra systems are named for Macaulay. Macaulay was educated at

Kingswood School (''In The Right Way Quickly'') , established = , closed = , type = Independent , religious_affiliation = Methodist , president = , head_label = Headmaste ...

and graduated with distinction from

St John's College, Cambridge St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corpo ...

. He taught the top mathematics class in St Paul's School in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

from 1885 to 1911. His students included

J. E. Littlewood John Edensor Littlewood (9 June 1885 – 6 September 1977) was a British mathematician. He worked on topics relating to mathematical analysis, analysis, number theory, and differential equations, and had lengthy collaborations with G. H. H ...

and G. N. Watson. In 1928 Macaulay was elected

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

Publications

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References

1862 births 1937 deaths 19th-century English mathematicians 20th-century English mathematicians Algebraic geometers Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge Fellows of the Royal Society People educated at Kingswood School, Bath {{UK-mathematician-stub