OLD AZURIANS

R P Macrae, Head of the Mathematics department, joined the staff in 1934. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School from where (or it may have been from Watford Grammar School) he gained an Exhibition to Balliol College, Oxford. He graduated in 1933 BA First Class with distinction in Differential Geometry. Old Boys whom he taught remember the exquisite clarity of his teaching. His introduction to differential calculus was a typically masterful exposition. On one occasion, when taking a group of boys on detention – possibly as a punishment for dropping lumps of calcium carbide into inkwells in their form-room and setting light to the acetylene gas that bubbled out, he took the opportunity to enlighten them on the subject of complex numbers (a+ib where i is the square root of minus 1). On a lighter side he oversaw the running of the school tuck shop. He retired in 1974 having served the school continuously for over 40 years, apart from absence on military service during WW2, and, in his later years, a term of enforced absence because of ill health.